The separation of people and state.

• Author: Barnett, Randy E.
• Position: The Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention - 2007: American Exceptionalism

The subject of American exceptionalism, about which much has been written, is extremely complex. There is no simple way to describe all the ways in which America differs from the other nations of the world. Steven G. Calabresi provides a wonderful and wide-ranging summary in his article "A Shining City on a Hill." (1) In his conclusion, Professor Calabresi writes:

American exceptionalism is thus absolutely exceptional among all the exceptionalisms of the world because of the belief that anyone of any race or nation can become an American just by believing in a set of ideas. Ours is a universal creed, and it is not predicated on the nationalist belief that we are superior because of who we are. Americans think America is superior because of what Americans believe. (2) And what is that creed? In his book American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, (3) Seymour Martin Lipset offers the following summary:

Born out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society.... [The American] ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed cultures. (4) Professor Calabresi is indeed correct that the United States Constitution is a central part of the creed that defines, creates, and preserves American exceptionalism. The American vision of constitutionalism includes at least four distinctive elements. Each of these elements has come under challenge by American constitutional law professors, at least some of whom prefer the European model of constitutionalism to the American one. (5) To the extent that these elements are eroded, America becomes less exceptional, which is a welcomed development among some of those same legal academics. (6)

First is the belief in adherence to a founding document: a written Constitution. The novelty of a written constitution has now been widely imitated around the world, but not necessarily imitated is the accompanying American ideology of faithful adherence to a document that both empowers and limits a government. Perhaps this is why the peoples of other countries do not revere their constitutions as...