The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

3.6.3.  Contextual Enrichment and Originalist Theory

Ryan Williams has done pioneering work on the role of contextual enrich-

ment from an originalist perspective. After recognizing the legitimacy of con-

stitutional implicature, Williams suggests the following criterion:

47

[I]f the implied content is not semantically encoded in the text, interpreters 

should inquire whether a reasonable member of the ratifying public at the 

time of enactment would have recognized the implied content as following 

obviously and noncontroversially from the choice of the particular language 

used in the provision and the relevant background context.

48

Further refinements may be required. The notion of a “reasonable member 

of the ratifying public” is a legal notion. But the question that we are acting 

45 

Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary offered the following as the sixth definition of “recess:”  

“Remission or suspension of business or procedure; as, the house of representatives had a 

recess of half an hour.” See 

http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/recess

.

46 

Nicholas Allott, Key Terms in Pragmatics (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010), 80.

47 

Ryan C. Williams, “The Ninth Amendment as a Rule of Construction” (2011) 111 Columbia 

Law Review 498, 544. Williams’ discussion of this point is somewhat misleading. He suggests 

that constitutional implications should be recognized if “the putatively implied content arises 

as a matter of logical necessity due to a noncancellable, semantically encoded formulation.” 

This formulation is correct, but Williams characterizes this principle as a component of a test 

“for recognizing constitutional implicatures.” That characterization is inaccurate. The logical 

consequences of semantic content are implications, not implicatures. See Kent Bach, “The 

Top Ten Misconceptions about Implicature’’ 3 

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kbach/TopTen.pdf

.

48 

Williams, Supra note 47.

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Lawrence B. Solum

on is not a legal question – it is a question about meaning. For this reason, we 

might substitute “competent speaker of American English” for “reasonable 

member.”

Williams uses the phrase “implied content,” but this usage runs the risk of 

conflating implication with implicature, impliciture, and presupposition. We 

might substitute “contextual enrichment.” Williams suggests that contextual 

enrichment should be limited to content that is obvious and noncontroversial, 

but it is not clear that this is the way that contextual enrichment always works. 

Sometimes the communicative content of a text may not be “obvious” –  

it may be that competent speakers would need to read carefully to see the 

contextual enrichment. Likewise, the existence of controversy does not auto-

matically cancel a contextual enrichment. Interpretation and construction of 

legal texts, and especially of the Constitution, involves motivated reasoning; 

vested interested or passionate ideologues may create controversy about impli-

catures that would be recognized by competent speakers motivated by a desire 

to understand the text.

With these alterations in mind, we might reformulate Williams’ proposed 

principle as follows:

Contextual enrichment should be recognized when competent speakers of 

the language at the time the constitutional provision was framed and ratified 

would recognize the enrichment of the text given the publicly available con-

text of constitutional communication.

Further questions remain.

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 Contextual enrichment gives rise to special cases 

of vagueness and ambiguity. When the content of a contextual enrichment 

is vague, the enrichment creates a construction zone. Another possibility is 

that competent speakers with knowledge of the publicly available context of 

constitutional communication would disagree about what the content of the 

enrichment is. This is a special case of ambiguity, “contextual ambiguity.” 

Usually, semantic ambiguity can be resolved by reference to context; in the 

case of implicative ambiguity, context creates the ambiguity. Of course, it 

might be the case that the ambiguity appears when some subset of the pub-

licly available context of constitutional communication is considered but 

resolves in light of the full context. But it is at least theoretically possible 

that ambiguity is irreducible, and hence that constitutional construction 

will be required.

49 

For further discussion of these issues, see Goldsworthy, Supra note 29, 27.

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