Recourse to Sages and Supermen: Interpreting the 1857 Oregon Constitution in Light of the Convention’s Failure to Hire an Official Reporter

Authors

Nora Coon

First Page

873

Abstract

The lodestar of Oregon interpretive methodology is “legislative intent,” whether it is statutory or constitutional. But discerning that intent is often difficult and it is made even harder when there is a dearth of meaningful history. The Oregon Constitution is one such troublesome document. The Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857 went against the trend of constitutional conventions in its era and failed to hire a reporter to document its proceedings, leaving that task to newspapers of varying political ideologies. The Oregon delegates, like their contemporaries, relied on four primary considerations: (1) the cost; (2) the importance of immediate publication; (3) the adequacy of newspaper coverage as an alternative; and (4) the value of the debates as a historical interpretive tool. Although the Oregon delegates never so much as put the question to a vote, its contemporaries very much did; Indiana, whose 1851 constitution provides the model for Oregon’s, produced more than 2,000 pages of verbatim proceedings, while other conventions produced similar records to inform their citizens and aid future interpretation.

An exploration of subsequent constitutional interpretation in Oregon reveals that, to the limited extent that the courts have relied on the legislative history of the Oregon Constitution, they have either deferred to the early judicial opinions of convention delegates who served on the courts or have looked to the inconsistent newspaper coverage as the only evidence of what was said. The lack of objective, unbiased history of the 1857 Convention warrants even greater caution when attempting to discern the intent of the framers of Oregon’s original constitution.

Recommended Citation

Nora Coon, Recourse to Sages and Supermen: Interpreting the 1857 Oregon Constitution in Light of the Convention’s Failure to Hire an Official Reporter, 27 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 873 (2023).
Available at: https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/lclr/vol27/iss3/4