Architexture

Abstract

Architectural images shape America's basic constitutional vocabulary. Lawyers and layfolk alike refer to those who ordained and established the Constitution as "Founders" and"Framers"-builders who laid the foundations and framed the timbers of the grand constitutional edifice we inhabit. And we call the most important remodeling of this edifice "the Reconstruction." Architectural metaphor is no newcomer to constitutional conversation. At the outset of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the two leading draftsmen-dare I say architects?---of what would become the Constitution voiced their visions in remarkably similar terms. First came James Wilson, "contend[ing] strenuously for drawing the most numerous branch of the Legislature immediately from the people. He was for raising the federal pyramid to a considerable altitude, and for that reason wished to give it as broad a basis as possible." Then came James Madison: "He thought too that the great fabric to be raised would be more stable and durable if it should rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves, than if it should stand merely on the pillars of the Legislature[]." Writing later as Publius, Alexander Hamilton summoned up a similar image in explaining the need for popular ratification of the proposed Constitution: "[T]he foundations of our national government [must lie] deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American