ABSTRACT
Four passages or developments in the formative era of American constitutionalism illustrate what these dual aspects of "thinking like a constitution" meant in practice. It is easy to subsume Federalist 10 and 47 under this rubric, and to admire how James Madison simultaneously appropriates and undermines Montesquieu's authority. But such an account cannot capture the course of empirical analysis and abstract theorizing for which these public essays were only the final and in some ways incomplete expression. Coincidentally, the next item in Madison's memorandum identifies a second critical aspect of learning to think like a constitution. Even so, the ratification procedures of 1787-1788 demonstrate that leading framers and Federalists were also grappling with, and solving, the fundamental issue of how to make the Constitution fully constitutional in the emerging sense of the term. The procedures of 1787-1788 capitalized on the Massachusetts innovation while avoiding its pitfalls.
