Taking the Constitution Seriously

Eric R. Claeys in the Claremont Review of Books reviews The Heritage Guide to the Constitution edited by Edwin Meese III, Matthew Spalding, and David Forte

Though many originalists are suspicious of legal realism and the other legal theories that supplanted natural law, they have a long way to go to reconstruct the moral imagination that informed the Constitution's drafting and ratification. Absent this moral context, the Free Speech Clause and many other important rights guarantees reduce to unprincipled assertions that cannot be explained by the few concrete examples we have of the founders' attitudes and practice.