Constitution Day, 28 June 2008

Every country with a constitution also has a long-running disagreement about what it means. That disagreement is not a defect; a text nobody argued about would be a text nobody was using.

The useful measure is not whether the argument exists but where it is conducted. When it happens in courts and chambers and newspapers, the document is doing its job.

I am a guest here, and a guest who starts offering readings of somebody else's constitution has mistaken the invitation.

So simply: congratulations on Constitution Day, and good luck to those doing the arguing.