The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Lawrence B. Solum

3.6.2.3. Presupposition

Presupposition is communicative content provided by an unstated assump-

tion or background belief that is conveyed by what is said.

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 Again, examples 

are helpful:

•  Utterance: “Grant was once a law professor.” Presupposition: “Grant is 

no longer a law professor.”

•  Utterance: “Jeff should not eat meat.” Presupposition: “Jeff does eat 

meat.”

•  Utterance: “Lisa’s wife is pregnant.” Presupposition: “Lisa has a wife.”

Philosophers of language distinguish between “conversational presupposi-

tions” (also called “speaker presuppositions” or “pragmatic presuppositions”) 

and “conventional presuppositions” (or “semantic presuppositions”) that are 

triggered by particular words or phrases (“no longer” in the first example 

above). For our purposes, we can put these technicalities to the side. The 

constitutional text may have a variety of presuppositions. Famously, the Ninth 

Amendment may presuppose the existence of “rights retained by the people” 

even though the explicitly semantic content of the text does not state that such 

rights exist.

3.6.2.4. Modulation

Finally, consider what is sometimes called modulation. The intuitive idea is 

that a conventional semantic meaning can be adjusted or modulated to fit the 

context – essentially a new meaning is created (sometimes on the spot) so that 

an old word is used in a new way. As Francois Recanati observes,

Sense modulation is essential to speech, because we use a (more or less) 

fixed stock of lexemes to talk about an indefinite variety of things, situations 

and experiences. Through the interaction between the context-independent 

meanings of our words and the particulars of the situation talked about, con-

textualised, modulated senses emerge, appropriate to the situation at hand.

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See e.g., David I. Beaver and Bart Geurts, “Presupposition,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso-

phy 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presupposition/

 (April 1, 2011); Bas C. van Fraassen, “Pre-

supposition, Implication, and Self-Reference” (1968) 65 Journal of Philosophy 136; Philippe 

Schlenker, “Be Articulate: A Pragmatic Theory of Presupposition” (2008) 34 Theoretical Lin-

guistics 157.

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Francois Recanati, Literal Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 131.

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Originalism and the Invisible Constitution 

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In ordinary speech, modulations may be “one offs,” used on a single occasion. 

But in the law modulation can create a new technical meaning for a word that 

also has an ordinary sense.

The text of the United States Constitution contains a variety of modulations –  

special purpose constitutional meanings that can be understood by paying 

attention to context. One example is (or hypothetically may be) the Recess 

Appointments Clause, which uses the word “recess.” Read acontextually, a 

recess might be any break in the business of the Senate – even a lunch break.

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But in context, “recess” is best read as a modulation, the meaning of which 

plays off the complimentary term “session.” The relevant sense of “recess” is a 

modulation of the conventional semantic meaning that is limited to the break 

between sessions of the Senate.

Finally, there is a residual category of “free enrichments” that do not fit into 

any of these categories. For present purposes, free enrichment is set aside.

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