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In this Article, Professor Golove responds to Professor Tribe on the latter’s own terms by offering a serious textual and structural analysis of the Treaty Clause that supports its nonexclusivity. Professor Golove shows that the constitutional text is in fact indeterminate and that, contrary to Professor Tribe’s claims, textualism cannot render a singularly persuasive construction of the Treaty Clause. By analyzing each of Professor Tribe’s arguments, Professor Golove shows that equally strong formal arguments can be constructed in favor of the nonexclusive reading. Professor Golove thus seeks to demonstrate by illustration that textualism is just as open to manipulation as the interpretive methodologies that Professor Tribe decries and, given the pervasive ambiguities in the text, is generally incapable of yielding unique, objective resolutions to constitutional disputes, even those over concrete provisions of the text. Only by systematically ignoring these equally plausible formalist counterarguments was Professor Tribe able to reach his favored reading of the Treaty Clause. In the final analysis, Professor Tribe’s article reflects free-formism in its most paradoxical form: free-form formalism.

This Article argues, contrary to conventional accounts, that the animating purpose of the American Constitution was to facilitate the admission of the new nation into the European-centered community of “civilized states.” Achieving international recognition—which entailed legal and practical acceptance on an equal footing—was a major aspiration of the founding generation from 1776 through at least the Washington administration in the 1790s, and constitution-making was a key means of realizing that goal. Their experience under the Articles of Confederation led many Americans to conclude that adherence to treaties and the law of nations was a prerequisite to full recognition but that popular sovereignty, at least as it had been exercised at the state level, threatened to derail the nation’s prospects. When designing the Federal Constitution, the framers therefore innovated upon republicanism in a way that balanced their dual commitments to popular sovereignty and earning international respect. The result was a novel and systematic set of constitutional devices designed to ensure that the nation would comply with treaties and the law of nations. These devices, which generally sought to insulate officials responsible for ensuring compliance with the law of nations from popular politics, also signaled to foreign governments the seriousness of the nation’s commitment. At the same time, however, the framers recognized that the participation of the most popular branch in some contexts—most importantly, with respect to the question of war or peace—would be the most effective mechanism for both safeguarding the interests of the people and achieving the Enlightenment aims of the law of nations. After ratification, the founding generation continued to construct the Constitution with an eye toward earning and retaining international recognition, while avoiding the ever-present prospect of war. This anxious and cosmopolitan context is absent from modern understandings of American constitution-making.