On the expression 'the founders'

Intriguing post on the Legal History Blog argues that serious historians should stop using the phrase "the founders".

This is how one uses the phrase in a sentence: It is not clear whether the founders approved of a broad reader of the commerce clause when they wrote it.

The problem with such a sentence is that it suggests a sort of chicken-entrails reading of the constitution that "the founders" wrote. What they thought of the commerce clause depends on which one or which cluster you want to discuss. The clusters you might want to understand overlap and/or contrast in confusing ways, and using the phrase "the founders" as if it is itself a coherent cluster of individuals living and working in the US in the late 18th century adds nothing but confusion.

In that particular case, we could also have used the phrase "the framers". But part of the problem is that, complicated as "the framers" itself is as a concept, "the founders" is broader and more so. Best avoiding.

Interesting analogy: consider the set of all politicians in the 1860s who had some input into making the Reconstruction Amendments what they were. Legal historians do not have a collective noun for these important folk. Nobody talks of "the reconstructors" ot "the second founders." And discussion of the period is all the better for it.

Just a thought.

Legal History Blog: Ablavsky, "Why We Should Stop Saying 'The Founders'"

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