Constitution Day and primary source documents

This post was first published in September 2017

Every year on September 17, patriots and law nerds celebrate Constitution Day. After the ratification process became something of a nail-biter, it was on this day that the Framers wrapped up their business and sent one of the most consequential pieces of parchment in history to be copied and distributed to the states. The original US Constitution now resides in Washington, D.C.’s National Archives museum.

Displaying the original document is wonderfully valuable in connecting modern citizens to their legal inheritance. And access to original documents has practical applications, too. My research has twice recently required original materials when reproductions fell short.

Several weeks ago I was researching an appeal when I pulled a case from the first series of the New York Reports, which goes back to 1847. I first found the case on Westlaw, where it was clear from the context that a specific word was missing from the sentence that contained my key proposition. I knew that the missing word was "not" — a word whose meaning is out of all proportion to its size.

Could it be I’d caught the erudite Westlaw editors in a mistake? (It wouldn’t have been the first time.) In order to find out, I had to leave the digital world and enter the realm of books and microfiche. Luckily, many bar associations have deep legal archives, and by pounding the pavement I was able to find one with the original reporter stored in its basement. As I thought, the meaning of the sentence was in fact directly opposite from what the electronic research resource told me.

The other case in which an original document proved critical to my argument is currently pending, but I can say this much: a) the motion hinges on a specific, decades-old statute; b) I knew that obtaining the legislative notes for that statute would bolster our position; and c) to track down the original legislative notes I had to rely on resources of the old-fashioned, analog kind.

New York, in general, is full of historical original documents, especially at the gorgeous Alexander Hamilton United States Custom House. Besides the SDNY Bankruptcy Court (whose surroundings are as beautiful as its subject matter is joyless), this building also houses New York City’s own branch of the National Archives and the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian.