Intratextualism

The full meaning of the Constitution's text often eludes textualists. By viewing the document's clauses in splendid isolation from each other - by reducing a single text to a jumble of disconnected clauses - readers may miss the significance of larger patterns of meaning at work. One underappreciated antidote to this brand of clause-bound textualism is an interpretive technique that Professor Amar calls intratextualism. Intratextualists read a word or phrase in a given clause by self-consciously comparing and contrasting it to identical or similar words or phrases elsewhere in the Constitution. Writing in the spirit of Charles Black's Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law, Professor Amar urges interpreters to read the Constitution more holistically, illustrating his distinctive technique with a series of rich readings of canonical and contested cases.