Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution

Summary

Rakove reconstructs how the framers actually argued, compromised, and improvised during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, rather than treating the document as the product of a fixed plan. He shows that there was no single original intent because the participants held conflicting ideas about government, rights, and federal power. The book offers a careful historical critique of the constitutional debates that still shape legal interpretation today.