In my new book, Historical Gloss and Foreign Affairs: Constitutional Authority in Practice, I document how the U.S. constitutional law of foreign affairs has been shaped over time by the practices and interactions of Congress and the executive branch. These practices, the book explains, have “glossed” the meaning of the Constitution’s text and structure—and this has been true since the very beginning of the country. As the book documents, the political branches have filled in and clarified constitutional meaning, on issues ranging from the recognition of foreign governments, to the conclusion of executive agreements, to the use of military force. In addition to providing examples of foreign affairs authority that have been glossed through practice, the book situates the historical gloss approach to constitutional interpretation within broader debates about constitutional theory.

I am deeply grateful to the participants in this online symposium for their engagement with the book, and to Jack Balkin for hosting it. The commentators are all terrific scholars, and they are methodologically and ideologically diverse in their perspectives. I cannot do justice in this post to their thoughtful reflections, so instead I will just touch on a few points. (For a broader description of the book and what it seeks to accomplish, readers might also be interested in the five posts that I wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy site on the eve of the book’s release.)

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• Introduction to the Symposium, Jack Balkin
• History and the Separation of Powers, Elena Chachko
• Historical Gloss and Originalism, Michael D. Ramsey
• What Gloss Glosses Over, Jean Galbraith
• Justifying Constitutional Change in Foreign Affairs Outside of Article V, Jide Nzelibe
• Gloss and Practice: Reading Bradley Through the Lens of Hart and Dworkin, Richard Fallon
• Historical Gloss and the Erosion of Constitutional Safeguards, Michael J. Gerhardt
• Congress and the Challenges of Historical Gloss, Kristen E. Eichensehr
• The Deep English Roots of Using the Custom and Tradition of Governmental Practice as a Source of Legal Meaning for Interpreting Written Constitutional Texts, or, A Lesson for Originalists Too, Julian Davis Mortenson
• Glossing the Foreign Affairs Constitution, Curtis Bradley

Read more at Balkinization