There is a problem of terminology that afflicts originalist scholarship. What should we call those who enacted the Constitution? Traditionally, scholars referred to them as the Framers, but that was often understood to mean the drafters of the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention. If one doesn't think that group has special authority — and I don't — one doesn't want to focus on them.
Another possibility is to refer to the "ratifiers" — the people in the ratification conventions of the states that ratified the Constitution. But once again, I don't think this group has special authority.
When talking about the decisions to put material in the constitution (such as, "the Framers decided on a unitary executive"), my view is that one wants to talk about all those who participated. This includes the Framers and the Ratifiers, but not just them. One is also talking about the people who elected the delegates to the ratifying conventions, which is the broad political nation at the time.
What term could we use? The Founders might work, except it often refers to the elite and to some elite (such as Adams and Jefferson) who were not even in the country when the Constitution was enacted.
In the end, in my own scholarship I have used the term "the constitutional enactors" or simply "the enactors." It is not bad, but it is not followed generally in the literature.
Does anyone out there have other suggestions?
Posted at 4:58 PM
Really good question. What about the “originators”? It is quite an originalist term 🙂
Originalist term? Is that kind of the term referred for originators? :))