@joefromchicago,
joefromchicago wrote:All of the drafters of the constitution had experience with paper money -- after all, the American government printed scads of it during the war of independence. If they wanted paper money, you'd think they would have given congress the authority to issue it.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is, Joe. Is it that a consequent originalist interpretation of the constitution prohibits that the US issue paper money? Or is your point that there is no way of applying the constitution to reality without interpreting it -- even if it's an originalist interpretation?
If you're saying the latter -- that you can't
not interpret the constitution -- I agree with you. A strictly literal interpretation gets you nowhere. The crassest example is that the Air Force would be unconstitutional under a strictly literal interpretation, because the Constitution permits only the establishment of an Army and a Navy. That would obviously be absurd.
But if your point is that a consequent originalist interpretation forbids the issuing of paper money, I think you're wrong. If you look up the topic in
The Founder's constitution, you will find that the framers understood the power to print paper currency to be part of the power to coin money. Indeed, it was the main part of what was prohibited to the states and reserved to the federal government. (The states could, after all, still circulate physical gold and silver.) The power to circulate paper, even in quantities that inflate the currency, is well-established even under an originalist interpretation of the constitution. (Additionally, Joseph Story suggests in a rhetorical question that paper money isn't really money, but rather an IOU of the issuer. If we took this suggestion seriously, the printing of paper money could alternatively be justified by the power of the United States "[t]o borrow Money on the credit of the United States" (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 2).