The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Law Review  1127;  Adrian  Vermeule, “The Facts about Unwritten Constitutionalism: A Re-

sponse to Professor Rubenfeld” (2001) 51 Duke Law Journal 473.

   8 

Lawrence B. Solum, “The Fixation Thesis: The Original Meaning of the Constitutional Text” 

(2015) 91 Notre Dame Law Review, 1.

   9 

Lawrence B. Solum, “The Constraint Principle: Original Meaning and Constitutional Prac-

tice” (unpublished manuscript on file with the author, 2017).

10 

The word “syllogism” is used loosely: as stated, the argument is enthymematic, although a 

valid syllogistic version could easily be stated.

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Originalism and the Invisible Constitution 

63

for the real issues at hand. The United States does not have an unwritten con-

stitution in the same sense that the United Kingdom does; no one seriously dis-

putes that claim (if it is understood narrowly). And even the United Kingdom 

has a constitution comprised largely of writings, although the writings are not 

an integrated document but are instead a collection of statutes, royal proc-

lamations, and many other texts. Opponents of the idea of an unwritten or 

invisible constitution in the American context do not dispute the existence of 

judicial decisions that create or articulate rules of constitutional law. In one 

sense, the United States obviously has an “unwritten” constitution: not all of 

the content of constitutional law is explicitly stated in the constitutional text. 

In another sense, the United States does not have an “unwritten” constitution: 

there is an integrated writing that is conventionally called “the Constitution 

of the United States of America.” Framing the issues in terms of the notion 

of an “unwritten constitution” or “invisible constitution” obscures rather than 

illuminates the questions that are at stake.

In this chapter, I will use an alternative vocabulary to describe the set of 

issues raised by the evocative phrases “invisible constitution” and “unwritten 

constitution.” The phrase “extra-textual sources” will be used to designate 

sources of constitutional law that are outside the text of the United States 

Constitution (as amended).

11

 One incomplete version of the written text is 

under glass in the National Archives; complete versions with the amend-

ments can be found in the United States Code and on the Internet. Extra-

textual sources include judicial opinions, the Articles of Confederation, the 

Declaration of Independence, the ethos of the framing era, theories of justice, 

the Northwest Ordinance, the historical practices of the institutions of govern-

ment and the American people, and many other things as well.

Here is the plan. In Section 

3.1

, I will attempt to concisely formulate the 

core of originalism as a constitutional theory. Section 

3.2

 will address extra-

constitutional sources, laying out a typology of the sources themselves and 

the roles that they can play in constitutional interpretation and construction. 

Section 

3.3

 will then examine several categories of extra-textual sources from 

an originalist perspective. The conclusion articulates the thesis that textual 

sources of constitutional law should have primacy in constitutional interpre-

tation and construction.

11 

See Tribe, Supra note 1, 6 (discussing the relationship between “invisible constitution” and 

extra-textual sources).

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64