What all Good Books Do

I recently finished reading Professor Danielle Allen's, Our Declaration and it did what all good books do it provoked me to think about my own work and beliefs. Specifically it showed me a disjuncture in the way I read texts and believe texts should be read. It has always been my belief that documents should be read within their historical context. In fact I don't believe you can be a historian if you believe in reading documents out of context. But this is in direct conflict with my belief that laws and constitutions should be read in the present context.

The easy out is to simply say that when I read historical documents, which are not active I read them as a historian, but when I read laws or constitutions I read them as a lawyer. While this is true it does not solve the disjuncture. Many lawyers, Originalists, do read the Constitution and laws in the context in which they were written. As I read Allen's book I was simultaneously struck by the beautifully crafted argument she was making and how vehemently I disagreed with it precisely because it was ahistorical. Conversely I am a fervent opponent of Originalism because one I don't think any one document created by multiple authors can have an original meaning and because I believe to read the Constitution in this way is to kill it.

I have never liked the phrase an evolving constitution as that implies that it is becoming better and I do not subscribe to Whiggish view of history or development. I prefer to think of it as relativistic that way there is no positive judgement or expectations associated with any time period. The laws of our country are simply changing as our country changes. But I digress from the problem at hand.

The best solution I can come up with is that I see documents such as the Declaration of Independence as dead, but law and the Constitution as living. However, this is still one level removed from the real division between living and dead documents. Alas, I have only been pondering this or a few hours and will not likely come to a solution for a while.