Time magazine managing editor Richard Stengel has penned a cover essay about the Constitution, One Document, Under Siege. My Independence Institute colleague Rob Natelson wrote a response addressing some of the many illogical or inaccurate claims therein.
For example:
Stengel: “The framers . . . gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths of a human being, that women were not allowed to vote and that South Dakota should have the same number of Senators as California, which is kind of crazy.”
Answer: The three-fifths compromise was a way of resolving a particularly thorny political difficulty; it was not an anthropological statement. In fact, the framers did recognize—repeatedly—the personhood of African-Americans. Nor did they “give us the idea” that women couldn’t vote; this was left up to the states, and in 1787 women DID vote, formally or informally, in some states. That may be one reason the Founders deliberately left the Constitution gender-neutral. (See p. 63 in my book, The Original Constitution.)
Whether equality of states in the Senate is a good idea is a matter of opinion, but enough very sane people think so to disqualify the idea from being “kind of crazy.”
For Natelson’s point about personhood, see Federalist 54, explaining that the Constitution recognizes that slaves are “moral persons,” not mere property. That’s why Madison was careful to refer to them as “persons.” In New Jersey, women had the formal right to vote until the legislature changed the law in 1807.
Stengel: “Your doctor’s stethoscope was made in one state and was shipped to and sold in another.”
Answer: Yes, and Congress may regulate the stethoscope sale. But the Constitution, properly understood, generally does not permit Congress to regulate what the physician does with the stethoscope, and certainly not how he is paid for his services.
My favorite:
Stengel: “There is an old Latin phrase, inter arma enim silent leges, which roughly translates as “in time of war, the Constitution is silent.”
Answer: I included this because ignorance of Latin and of the Founders’ latinate English has led to many constitutional misinterpretations, and because the mangled, ungrammatical version Stengel uses suggests that he got it from Star Trek (Deep Space Nine) rather than from Cicero.
The phrase is actually “Silent enim leges inter arma.” One reason the Founders were better qualified to address constitutional issues than Mr. Stengel is that they HAD read Cicero, and in Latin.
Incidentally, the correct translation is “For laws are silent amid arms.”