Founding-Era Translations of the United States Constitution

Mulligan, Christina; Douma, Michael J.; Lind, Hans J.; Quinn, B.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2486301

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Our project consisted in a comparison of above-mentioned founding-era translations and the original English version of the US constitution. We have composed a comprehensive table, juxtaposing the English, German and Dutch versions [42]. Both concordances were noted, as were differences in terminology and phrasing.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…There are indications that he was a Southern German native speaker. 42 His word use is elevated, and he likely did not, or did not always, use a dictionary, since some of his translations are not the obvious choice if compared to contemporary dictionaries. 43 The latter is especially the case when it comes to more technical terms: here his choices often are far from what the dictionaries of the time would have listed.…”

Section: Conclusion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…44 Some of his vocabulary also appears dated, especially 41 An issue most pertinent in the translation of the Necessary and Proper Clause. 42 In one instance, he even uses a word that was only common in some German dialects: The translator uses the word "zween", which is the male variant of "two", a distinction that was only present in some parts of Southern Germany. It could however also be a typo ("zween" instead of "zweien"), but the grammatical case and the gender match better in the case of "zween".…”

Section: Conclusion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Translation Approaches in Constitutional Hermeneutics

et al. 2020

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In this article, we suggest an alternate approach to interpreting the US Constitution, using founding-era translations. We demonstrate how both symmetries and asymmetries in structure and vocabulary of the languages involved can help in deciding nowadays' problems of constitutional interpretation. We select seven controversial passages of the US constitution to illustrate our approach: Art. I, § 8, cl. 3 ("to regulate commerce"); Art. II, § 1, cl. 5 ("natural born citizen"); Art. II, § 2, cl. 3 ("recess"); Art. I, § 6, cl. 1/Art. I, § 8, cl. 10/Art. IV, § 2 ("felony"); and Art. IV, § 2, cl. 1 ("privileges and immunities"). Since these passages have recently been debated by constitutional scholars, reassessing them using our method can establish the additional value of our approach to constitutional practice. We presume that our approach is not limited to interpreting the US constitution, but suggest that constitutional hermeneutics in general could profit from adding a translation approach to the toolkit.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Conclusion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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