I appreciate Professor Strang’s generous review as well as the incisive questions he raises. The questions cut to the heart of whether The Political Constitution’s account of constitutional authority can stand. I believe it can, but Strang’s questions require a reckoning first. These include the claim that we are obligated to our Constitution because it is the work of our political ancestors; the book’s related critique of “presentism”; the emphasis on judging the Constitution according to its good in the here and now; and Strang’s argument that The Political Constitution would have benefited from elaboration in certain areas, especially more extensive situation within long-running scholarly debates.

With respect to the Constitution’s ancestral authority, Strang asks whether it is possible either “that the adopters of the Constitution are not one’s ancestors in a meaningful sense” or that “one’s membership in the political community is so thin, or may be even a source of harm, such that the community’s past commitments are not one’s own.” This is a crucial critique, for much of The Political Constitution’s justification of originalism would fall if it succeeds. It goes without saying that few of us claim literal descent from the ratifying conventions of 1787. But the book’s claim is that our membership in this political community constitutes a sort of adoption into the generational constitutional family of the United States. It is true that our membership in the political community is thin—here I set aside the outlying case in which membership is positively harmful—but that is a case for a Tocquevillian federalism that makes it more meaningful. If our commitments are so thin, a common good is not possible.

Professor Strang also invokes natural law on a related note: “the current citizens of a political community are entitled to and, as rational beings, should be presented with sound reasons that support the community’s legal system.” Importantly, whatever these reasons may be, “citizens are entitled to evaluate those reasons now.”

Of course, citizens are undeniably free to question their Constitution at any discrete moment in time. I do not mean to call that into question. But a Constitution must enjoy what Federalist 49 called “the prejudices of the community,” seasoned with time, in order to endure. Edmund Burke was not an American, but Americans can nonetheless profit from his teaching, which located wisdom in the “collected reason of ages.” As Strang notes, that reason is still to be judged in the present. But it should be judged in a spirit of prudent deference to one’s political ancestors, not on an assumption that we, here and now, have all the answers to political questions. This speaks to the book’s larger critique of presentism, which is the tendency of advocates of judicial engagement—though not them exclusively—not merely to judge intergenerational claims in the present but rather to do away with these claims altogether in favor of determining whether the Constitution serves us well right now.

Finally, I grant Strang’s suggestion that The Political Constitution might have profited from more explicit engagement with literature on such topics as the common good. For purposes of this project, I felt the important claim to recover was less the precise nature of political community and the common good than the fact of their existence. But Strang is doubtless right to say a deeper discussion of these topics—and others, including broadening chapter 3 beyond Madison’s views of judicial power—would have enriched the conversation.

I am grateful to Professor Strang for raising these questions and for the opportunity to amplify these points. The book would have been richer for having had the benefit of his insight into these issues. Regardless, I certainly am now.