Con Law: How a Fake Document Could Help the Supreme Court Diminish our Democracy
Con Law: How a Fake Document Could Help the Supreme Court Diminish our DemocracyThree decades after the Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams set about assembling the government’s official Journal of the Convention. Missing from the records was the proposal submitted by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. So Adams wrote him to request a copy. Pinckney replied with an extraordinary document: a draft that so closely resembled the final Constitution that he would have to have been clairvoyant to have written it. With most of the 1787 convention’s attendees now dead, Pinckney may have seen an opportunity to claim credit as a key architect of the Constitution. Whatever the reason, Pinckney submitted a fraudulent draft. “At the distance of nearly thirty two Years it is impossible for me now to say which of the 4 or 5 draughts I have was the one,” he replied…