Book Review:
Walter Benn Michaels, The Fate of the Constitution (reviewing Philip Bobbitt’s Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution (1982)), 61 TEXAS L. REV. 765 (1982).
 

Abstract:
Beginning with the seemingly obvious principle that an interpreter of a text must have a text to interpret, Prof. Michaels explores Prof. Bobbitt’s book on the theory of the Constitution. Bobbitt argues that there are six kinds of constitutional argument: historical, textual, doctrinal, prudential, structural, and ethical. From there, Bobbitt addresses the fundamental question of whether constitutional doctrine is found or made. Bobbitt argues that this question is irrelevant—this issue assumes a distance between the Constitution and its interpreters. According to Bobbitt, what’s really going on is a “participatory Constitution.” The line between the interpreter and the Constitution is blurred, if not completely erased.