This course introduces students to a uniquely American, and to some ways of thinking, an especially naive, contribution to politics:  The idea that we can make political practice conform to the written word. As some critics have said, the Constitution rests on the belief that saying a thing makes it so. Stripped to essentials, it is this assumption above all others that informs constitutional law.  The undeniable implausibility of the claim, however, means that what we call constitutional law is really constitutional interpretation.

 During the semester, we shall see that most of the serious issues in constitutional interpretation arise from conflicts between our commitment to two or more positive values. There are, for example, inevitable and recurrent conflicts (despite our attempts to ignore them), between the values of order and liberty. In Justice Frankfurter's words, these conflicts illustrate "what the Greeks thousands of years ago recognized as a tragic issue, namely the clash of rights, not the clash of wrongs."  In this course, we examine these clashes by considering the broader philosophical and institutional problems of the American constitutional order. I hope to show that constitutional answers to problems concerning separation of powers, federalism, and individual liberties require a coherent and comprehensive understanding of the Constitution, and of the assumptions it makes about human nature and the proper ends of government.