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Interpreting State Constitutions: A Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System.

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Interpreting State Constitutions: A Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System

James A. Gardner University of Chicago Press www.press.uchicago.edu 467 pp., $65

Our constitutional system is mostly theory. It is our identity as a self-governing society that forms us, yet is hidden from us, like the subatomic particles that physicists cannot see. None of us--no citizen, no judge, no juror or legislator--comes into a law office on a Tuesday and signs the social contract on the dotted line. We have inherited the American constitutional system. We did not create it, yet it is ours to understand and improve if we can. Paradoxically, our founding precepts as a free political community are defined--some would say continually redefined--by this struggle to share a concept of our organic law.

State constitutions, and their evolving place in our federal system, are especially challenging to understand and use. James Gardner, a law professor at the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, has written a masterful, deeply intelligent book that offers new insight into how state constitutions should and do function. Slim, timely, and fluidly readable, it is an excellent first book on state constitutional law for those new to the subject; but it intends to be, and is, a meaningful contribution to the field.

Gardner tells us in his foreword that the book "is an attempt to devise...