On line at 35 an hour

Fri Aug 24 15:53:58 PDT 2007

This is not directly responsive to Professor Johnson, but his interesting message is a good place to cut in.   My question to anyone who who cares to answer is whether there is any contemporary awareness of J. Franklin Jameson, who quite some years ago edited at least one volume that contained papers on the second Convention movement.

This point is basically covered in my earlier message as to Point 3 or Professor Rakove's question about why the opinions of objectors are relevant.

Matthew Holden, Jr.

Matthew Holden, Jr.
Henry L. and Grace M. Doherty Professor Emeritus of Politics, University of Virginia

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-----Original Message-----
From: Calvin Johnson <CJohnson at law.utexas.edu>
To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Sent: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 4:00 pm
Subject: On line at 35 an hour

Elliot is available on line, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hlawquery.html   

            You can therefore search by word, find it on the page, copy the full paragraph and edit down to two lines, without lifting your quill pen.   Finding and editing nuggets at the rate of 35 an hour means you go back to the original sources more often and check to make sure.  Never trust a secondary source when you can collect a big sample yourself at 35/hr   You can call up the specters of Madison and Washington by KWIC, who will talk to you on point KWIC.  

                           Jensen, Kaminski & Saladino are good, but you are lucky to collect 35 a day, especially if you have to hand copy and then type the quotes.   When you had to visit the individual archives, 35 nuggets a year was not bad year’s work.   

Law of large numbers is the best way to correct historical errors.  Lots of historians misjudgments come from trying to generalize from too few nuggets. 

Johnson, Really Cool Stuff: Digital Searches into the Constitutional Period.  Constitutional Commentary  (Aug 2007)

2. On NC &RI.  Best remedy for misinterpretation is not to exclude evidence, but to scratch the bottom of the barrel for every available scrap.  You get judgment that Gallatin is making it up, but only with more evidence.  Since RI was the first target of the Constitution  -- that despicable corner of the continent who had done more damage to the nation than the whole state was worth (by vetoing federal tax on imports needed to pay the war debts),  I can not imagine knowing what the C was about without knowing something about RI.  The C was once a weapon in a hard fought war, and if you do not know the battle you can not know its meaning.

Best as always.

Calvin H. Johnson 
Andrews & Kurth Centennial Professor of Law 
The University of  Texas  School of Law 
727 E. Dean Keeton (26th) St. 
Austin, TX 78705 
(512) 232-1306 (voice) 
FAX: (512) 232-2399 
Website: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/cvs/chj7107_cv.pdf 
For reviews, chapters, discounts and news on Johnson, Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders Constitution (Cambridge University Press 2005) see http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/calvinjohnson/RighteousAnger/

From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu [mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Jack Rakove
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 2:59 PM
To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Early American Voting Demographics (responding to ProfessorRakove responding to himself)

My historian colleagues in the document-editing trade routinely wonder (as I think Paul Finkelman recently noted) why anyone keeps citing to Elliot's somewhat suspect Debates when the Jensen, Kaminski & Saladino edition of The Documentary History of Ratification is so far along. Volume III is devoted to Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut. If there is extant material for those states, that's where to look. Or to put it another way: Elliot, Schmelliot.

On the technical side of interpretation, I have wondered about the value of citing to either the NC or RI debates, either in 1788 or afterward, as evidence of original understanding or "public meaning" (whatever that is). How could the original understanding of rejecting parties (as of 1788) be a guide to interpretation? And wouldn't any gloss derived from the moment after the Constitution took effect be better regarded as subsequent interpretation rather than original understanding?

Jack Rakove
Stanford University

Historian by day
Cubs fan all the days of my life (therefore potentially including the messianic days as well; and for other possibilities, cf. William Kinsella, "The Last Pennant Before Armageddon.")

Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:12:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: seth tillman <sbarretttillman at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Early American Voting Demographics (responding to
        Professor Rakove)

Just to clarify a point Professor Rakove made about Rhode Island ratification.

  As I understand it, although R.I. did not "originally" call a convention in 1788, at a time when other states did so, it did call a ratification convention in 1790 -- after the Constitution had already gone into effect among the ratifying states.  That convention, at the conclusion of its second session, ratified the Constitution.  

  The R.I. Convention's debates are not available in Elliot's Debates.  As a result many (otherwise well informed) people believe no such debates or records have survived from R.I. until today.  In fact, the debate of the first session of the R.I. convention can be found in: Cotner, Robert C., ed. Theodore Foster?s Minutes of the Convention Held at South Kingstown, Rhode Island, in March, 1790, Which Failed to Adopt the Constitution of the United States . 1929. Reprint. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970.  The record of the debates, such as it is, is not very detailed, and unfortunately, the R.I. debates are not a treasure trove of useful tidbits for making novel arguments about original public meaning.  

  My understanding is that when the Ratification Project publishes its volume on Rhode Island, these debates will be reproduced.  (For all I know this volume is already out.)  

  And in the event anyone might be interested, a record of the New Jersey convention has also survived -- another state not reported in Elliot's Debates.  But only minutes have survived, no substantive debate.  Again, not a treasure trove of useful tidbits.  There are also some records of the Vermont's 1790 ratification.  I believe Elliot's Debates does not report any Delaware or Georgia debates, and as far as I know none now exist, but I should be very glad to hear otherwise if anyone has different information.  

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