Preface

• Author: Simeon C.R. McIntosh
• Profession: Professor Emeritus of Law at Howard University, Washington, DC
• Pages: 7-9

Preface

The recent decision of the Caribbean Court of Justice in the seminal case

of Boyce and Joseph, involving the interpretation of the Barbados Constitution

and its relationship to the American Convention on Human Rights, to which

Barbados is a signatory, has placed in high relief the central importance of

interpretation to the enterprise of constitutional adjudication. In a word,

adjudication, generally, and constitutional adjudication, in particular, is a

hermeneutical enterprise. Put differently, hermeneutics, the theory or the art

of interpretation of texts, is central to adjudication. It asks us to be more

conscious of the way or ways we read our constitutional texts and of the

justificatory reasons we advance in defence of that reading. For it is beyond

doubt that the interpretation of a constitution is a fundamental political

act. It has serious consequences, not only for individual citizens as litigants,

but for the way we define communities. Hermeneutics is therefore linked to

constitutional and political theory. Thus, if for no other reason, one should

hope that this present collection of essays might prove of some interest to the

reader.

The essays in this collection are concerned mainly with constitutional

interpretation – primarily with the interpretation of the American and

Commonwealth Caribbean Constitutions. The essays on American

constitutional theory were written during my tenure as a law professor in

the United States, and the two pieces on West Indian constitutional theory

are the products of my work at the University of the West Indies. I have now

decided to republish these essays in a single volume for two main reasons:

first, I believe they might be of some interest, not only for the student of law,

but also for the student of the humanities and the social sciences. To follow

the late Hans-Georg Gadamer, the leading hermeneuticist of the twentieth

century, these essays might constitute a common ground where the jurist

would meet the theologian and the student of the humanities and the social

sciences.

But the second and probably more important reason follows on the fact

that the American Constitution and the West Indian Constitution share a deep

kinship, which is not recognised in West Indian constitutional theory. They are

both written political texts establishing a democratic polity and embodying a