The Founders of the Bill of Rights: Triangulating To Meaning

[JMHACLJ at aol.com]

I am left to wonder a bit by this discussion.  Specifically, I am left  to 
wonder whether why there should be an outright rejection of any search for  
meaning for the text of Bill of Right in the arguments of the  Antifederalists.
 
In law school, and in CLEs thereafter, I have peeked at the "Getting to  Yes" 
book, and taken a course or two on negotiations.  And I have spoken  with my 
share of clients and with some negotiators too.
 
Ultimately, I have concluded that the negotiators whose efforts produced  the 
most stable and satisfying outcomes over the long run are those who, while  
taking care that their own bottom lines were protected, also looked to the  
interests of the opposing or opposite side.  Maybe that meant that a wallet  was 
not as fully padded as it otherwise might have been, or maybe it meant that  a 
client agency agreed to a term of settlement that would not have been imposed 
 by a court order.
 
I wonder whether, no matter how strongly it is felt that the AFs excised  
themselves from the process and are not entitled to be consulted on the meaning  
of the documents and terms, my crude lessons in negotiation and agreement  
suggest, as they certainly do to me, that rejecting that role for the AFs is  
about as considered a judgment as rejecting the influential role of gravity on a  
space vehicle launch just because the earth does not deliberately participate 
in  holding things closely against its "sweet flowing breast."  Not, of 
course,  because the AFs were spectacular negotiators, but because Madison and 
others  might be viewed as having played that role.
 
In other words, why is it inaccurate to conclude that the meaning of the  
text of the first ten amendments, and of the most recent one, be derived by a  
kind of triangulation that involves casting about in the minds of principal  
architects, such as Madison, for lines of meaning that would placate those AF  
concerns about the new Constitution?
 
Jim Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ
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