Reforming the American federal republic | Taming polarization: Reforming the American federal republic conference

So let's start with a simple proposition.

Systems of government and constitutions are inevitably and inescapably living things.

And that's an epistemic point.

That's not an interpretation.

That is just... as a theory of interpretation is no help.

First of all, because if you look at the US Constitution, as understandings about them change.

So even if it were possible to hold fixed meanings for some provisions, the context keeps changing.

And so the meaning of those provisions and what they're doing changes with it.

But of course, original understandings evolve too.

So even if you're in originalism, the understanding of what the original meaning was keeps changing.

And the way in which it's interpreted.

So you inevitably have this living creature that is constantly evolving and changing as the times change and as the needs of the country change and as people adapt to it.

Now, the U.S. Constitution, when it was created, was created with a set of understandings about how government could and should and would operate.

James Madison is usually given credit as the chief theorist of this.

And interestingly enough, his ideas have completely informed modern understandings of the meaning of the Constitution, of its underlying theory.

And so what's interesting about that is most of that understanding comes from reading Madison's notes and Madison's letters and Madison speeches, but if you actually look at what everybody else was writing while Madison was speaking, for instance, it turns out nobody had a clue what he was talking about.

It was going right over their heads, which is not surprising.

It was really original creative thinking, and that seldom settles in at first.

So almost nobody understood what Madison was talking about, and the few who did understand it, you know, Alexander Hamilton, Goddard, Thomas Jefferson, disagreed.

They thought it was wrong.

So the theory that lay behind the original Constitution was, in fact, much more conventional.

But there is an 18th century conventional understanding.

But there is a theory that underlies it.

More importantly, of course, the shape of the Constitution reflected a whole series of just pragmatic compromises on what was needed in order to get to agreement about it, including, importantly for tonight's conversation, the structure.

votes, and it's not reflective of the actual representation of the size of populations.