In two imposing works entitled Constitutional Interpretation and Constitutional Construction, Keith Whittington has offered one of the most sophisticated accounts of constitutional interpretation in the recent literature of constitutional theory. The former volume, in particular, addresses the question of whether that form of constitutionalism centered on a written text dictates the originalist approach to interpretation as a, if not the, necessary condition of its possibility. Originalism, of course, is the theory that we should understand constitutional provisions in the terms in which they were understood by those who wrote and ratified those provisions. In Whittington's words:

Does constitutionalism indeed require originalism? Whittington's answer, simply and resoundingly, is: yes.

The virtue of Whittington's approach to this question is that he recognizes that we cannot ground adherence to the intentions of the Framers on the claim that the Framers intended that we do so.