Book Review

David P. Currie, a professor at the University of Chicago's law school, comprehensively and concisely considers the roles that Congress and the executive played in creating constitutional law in the first twelve years of the United States Constitution's operation. Relying heavily on congressional debates, Currie concludes that before 1800 six Federalist congresses and two Federalist presidents, not the Supreme Court, made "nearly all" constitutional law and that many of their interpretations "established traditions almost as hallowed in some cases as the Constitution itself." In fact, some constitutional issues they engaged "have never been resolved by judges." As a bonus, Currie often ties their decisions on issues to the Court's subsequent interpretations.

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The volume has two almost equal parts. The first covers the First Congress (1789–1791), which adopted numerous laws on a variety of topics, including taxes, trade, a national bank, payment of the revolutionary war debt, courts, naturalization, Indians, and a bill of rights. In the process, responsible, thoughtful, and mostly nonpartisan congressmen pioneered the techniques of constitutional interpretation still in use: text, structure, history, purpose, practice, and avoidance of absurd consequences. Congress was "a sort of continuing constitutional convention," whose accomplishments were "on a plane" with those of the Federal Convention (1787) that drafted the Constitution.

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