Constitutional interpretation by formal decisionmakers committed to confine their decisions to legal bases is not the same practice as constitutional discourse, which, among other things, evaluates those decisions. Constitutional argument is available to the public at large (which constitutes the largest group of constitutional deciders) only because the language and means of such argument have a resonance in the rest of our cultural life.

DEFINE: Distinguishes formal constitutional interpretation by decisionmakers from broader constitutional discourse that evaluates those decisions and is open to the public.

Philip Chase Bobbitt, Philip Chase Bobbitt - Refl…, loc. 767