The Phenomenal Constitution

by Austin Steelman

Abstract

When adherents to a conservative position on gun control policy were asked about their position and could offer multiple explanations, a shockingly small number provided answers that had to do with either guns themselves or the function of the policy in question. When asked about guns, respondents talked about the Constitution. As Ken Kersch argued and these respondents demonstrated, the Constitution is a phenomenon in American political development—particularly the Constitution of the conservative imagination.

Ken Kersch argument one point that is essential to the study of conservatism: taking conservatism seriously necessarily means taking conservative constitutionalism seriously.