Tea Party Movement Highlights Idea of ‘Popular Constitutionalism’

The Tea Party movement is embracing the idea of originalism and restraints on government power, to the delight of law professors who study how popular opinion influences constitutional interpretation.

These scholars say the public should influence constitutional debate—and they call the idea “popular constitutionalism,” the New York Times reports. The notion is that “the Supreme Court should have no more monopoly on the meaning of the Constitution than the pope has on the meaning of the Bible,” the newspaper says.

In particular, party members cite the 10th Amendment reserving powers to the states, the Second Amendment’s protection of gun rights, and the Fifth Amendment’s limits on takings of private property, the story says.

But it's not the only group to have expressed constitutional concerns. Civil rights leaders invoked the idea of equal protection to support their movement, the story points out, and supporters and opponents of the New Deal both debated the commerce clause and protections for private contracts. More recently, the National Rifle Association’s view of the Second Amendment was embraced by the Supreme Court in its 2008 decision District of Columbia v. Heller.

Questions about constitutional theory aren’t “an elite-driven idea,” according to Columbia Law School professor Nathaniel Persily. “People have opinions about this.”