Americans can perhaps be pardoned for remaining ignorant of the proposed constitution for the expanding European Union (EU) unveiled to its member governments on June 20, 2003. Academic specialists have followed the Convention on the Future of Europe's work on the constitution, but prior to June, the only U.S. newspaper regularly covering its deliberations was the Washington Times, which is not yet a journal of record. It was perhaps to pique American interest that the convention's president, former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, periodically compared his convention with the Philadelphia convention of 1787 and himself first with Benjamin Franklin and then with Thomas Jefferson. Giscard may have contrived the Franklin reference to imply that he was only an elder statesman, not a Europhile with political ambitions yet to satisfy, but the allusion to Jefferson is more intriguing. Jefferson's role "was to instill leading ideas into the system," Giscard told the New York Times. He "was a man who wrote and produced elements that consolidated the Constitution."

At first glance, these comments suggest Giscard was too clever by half. After all, Jefferson did not attend the Constitutional Convention. Instead, he remained in his diplomatic post at Paris, content to criticize the delegates for failing to include a declaration of rights in the proposed U.S. Constitution. If Jefferson did anything to "consolidate" the Constitution, it was to foster a canon of constitutional interpretation that favored the reserved powers of the states over the expansive view of federal authority held by George Washington and John Adams, his two predecessors as president, as well as Alexander Hamilton, his...