Obama as Constitutional Historian (New York Times Version)

The New York Times editorial board (and I'm guessing Brent Staples had a lot to do with this), has a lengthy editorial up about President Obama's speech last night.  It's called "Obama and the Long March."  What particularly interests me is the way it focuses on Obama's ideas about constitutional history and the implementation of constitutional ideals.  Here's an important part of the opening:

[Obama's] presence on the podium was also a valedictory for an exceptional man and president who will be remembered for eloquently defending the founding precepts of the country — even as he used those precepts to expand the mandate of inclusiveness and broaden the definition of what it means to be an American.

 And this is where the editorial links Obama's ideas about the Constitution to his past speeches and to his vision of political action: 

At the very start of his journey to the White House, he delivered a speech on race in 2008. He placed his story in the context of a great nation born with a great moral failing, one that seemed impossible to correct: “Words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part — through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk — to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.”

And this is what makes me think of Obama's writings about the Constitution -- where he emphasizes process.  (This is a theme that James Kloppenberg explained in Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope and the American Political Tradition).  But what the editorial focuses on is the ways that Americans put constitutional ideals into action, that is how they reach out beyond the scope of the written "Constitution" and create a Union using constitutional principles inspired by the text and by certain other foundational principles. Stacey Gahagan and I wrote some about this in an article on Obama's course on race at the University of Chicago Law School.  But we focused more on Obama's belief that Americans needed to act, rather than waiting for courts to do it.  What has become clear -- and what the Times editorial focuses on -- is that Obama sees that as we all are constitutional actors. Obama may expand the scope of our understanding of "constitutional law."  (And I guess I'd have to say that this reminds me of the vision of many pre-Civil War orators who saw cemeteries as a place to articulate and put into action constitutional principles.)

The image is, of course, the Washington Monument, which I chose because stretching back to before the Civil War it was one place that inspired oratory about Union and constitutionalism and it has continued to do so.  This is one of the physical monuments supporting an expanded vision of constitutional principles and action.  Of course there are so many other places to think about here -- among my favorites is Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, where the ideas of Union and equality that underlay the War were put into action.

Comments

[Matthew Reid Krell]

Al,

You should read Jason Frank's Constituent Moments. Very interesting book about the legitimation of constitutional action by appeal to popular sovereignty. Seems consistent with your thinking here about Obama's positions on individuals as constitutional actors.