Conclusion
Interpretation has dominated contemporary constitutional theories for too long. Studies of the founding moment have either been undertaken as part of the enterprise of constitutional interpretation organised along the divide between fact (fidelity) and norm (absorption) or have simply fallen outside the purview of constitutional theory (disregard).
As a result, the formative role of the founding moment in the unfolding of the constitutional project has not yet received the attention it deserves. This not only creates the gap in constitutional imagination between specialists and the public but is also symptomatic of the pathology of contemporary constitutional theories: the more sophisticated constitutional interpretation becomes, the more elusive the meaning of the constitutional order appears to the public.[123]Alternatively, I have proposed a relational approach to the constitutionalisation of the founding moment, according to which the founding moment sits between fact and norm. The founding moment is related to the constitutional order by virtue of narratives that substantiate the constitutional order with meaning, rendering the constitutional project jurisgenerative. The founding moment under the relational view proposed here can be further analysed in three aspects. In terms of substance, constitutional theory will have to extend beyond the debate over interpretive methodology to ‘stories of peoplehood’. Surely reframing the historical fact of the founding moment in constitutional terms through narratives is not just another restatement of constitutional theory on the role of history in the interpretation of constitutional norms. Rather, the process of accounting for the founding moment under the relational view recasts the understanding of the constitutional project in democratic terms. The discovery of the meaning of the constitutional order is not constitutional experts’ privileged enterprise, but rather requires the democratisation of constitutional (re)interpretation.
Narratives epitomise the media via which the meaning of the constitutional project can be democratically discovered. Through the narratives about the founding moment in the democratic pursuit of constitutional meaning, the constituent power can be brought to the fore in the present constitutional order without fearing its unsettling or destructive force.Apart from substance and process, the structure of narratives about the founding moment is the pivot of the underlying constitutional imagination of the collective constitutional project that involves every member of the political community. Narratives about the founding moment are part of the narratives about the growth trajectory of the constitutional order. They must be told in a structure of unity in order to be coherent and thus persuasive. This is not only an ethics of speaking constitutional language but also makes it possible for citizens to find themselves in the constitutional nomos. To make sense of the constitutional order, constitutional theory needs to look beyond interpretation and take the quest for meaning and identity in the constitutional project seriously.