On Friday, May 1, Law Day, ACS released two important new books on the Constitution and constitutional interpretation, and hosted a panel discussion at the National Press Club with the authors and other experts on the ideas presented in the books, moderated by Dahlia Lithwick. Keeping Faith With the Constitution offers a compelling and common-sense approach to constitutional interpretation that is faithful to the Constitution's words and principles and explains why it is the world's most enduring written Constitution. The authors of the book are three leading constitutional scholars: Goodwin Liu, Pamela S. Karlan and Christopher H. Schroeder. The companion volume, It Is a Constitution We Are Expounding: Collected Writings on Interpreting Our Founding Document, is an anthology of excerpts of some of the finest existing writing on methods of constitutional interpretation, taken from decisions of the Supreme Court and other judicial opinions and speeches, the scholarly literature, and other sources. It was edited by Pamela Harris and Karl Thompson, and includes a Foreword by Professor Laurence H. Tribe. These books are designed to be useful to a wide readership, including lawyers, judges, law students, and every citizen engaged in the nation's debates over the Constitution, the courts and judicial nominations. Watch video of National Press Club event on the books here. 

UPDATE: Fri. May 1, 2009, 10:23 a.m. (EST)

You can now download Keeping Faith with the Constitution at www.ACSLaw.org/KeepingFaith.

Keeping Faith with the Constitution presents a common-sense approach to interpreting the U.S. Constitution and explains why it is the world's most enduring written Constitution. Authored by legal scholars Goodwin Liu, Pamela S. Karlan and Christopher H. Schroeder, the book shows how the Framers inscribed the fundamental values of liberty, equality and democracy into the Constitution and offers an approach to interpreting the Constitution that, as its Framers envisioned, applies the Constitution's text and broad principles to the changing needs and conditions of our society.

The authors call their approach "constitutional fidelity," and argue that being faithful to the Constitution requires judges to ask not how the Constitution's general principles would have been applied in 1789 or 1868, but rather how those principles should be applied today. As the authors explain, this approach is true to the vision of the Framers, who deliberately left the words and broad principles in the document open to future interpretation and adaptation.

The book notes the shortcomings of originalism and so-called "strict construction." The authors argue, for example, that if originalism means resolving constitutional disputes according to how those who wrote the text would have resolve them at the time, it would not be faithful to the Framers' own vision. The Framers, they explain, were not so parochial as to bind future generations to their own specific understandings of broad principles. The genius of their accomplishment is that they correctly anticipated that a constitution written in general terms, open to interpretation and adaptation by succeeding generations, would endure and retain its legitimacy even as the nation experienced profound social, economic and political transformations.

This Friday, ACS will release two books on the Constitution and constitutional interpretation. Keeping Faith with the Constitution, a book that provides a compelling and common-sense approach to constitutional interpretation, will offer a counter to the proponents of originialism.

Keeping Faith by scholars Goodwin Liu, Pamela S. Karlan and Christopher H. Schroeder, examines the text and history of the Constitution to show how the Framers inscribed the fundamental values of liberty, equality and democracy into the document. It also offers an approach to interpreting the Constitution that the authors call "constitutional fidelity," which as the Framers envisioned, applies the Constitution's broad principles to a changing society and enables the document to retain its relevance an authority over time.