For a man who studied, but never practiced law, laws and lawgiving played a central role in the life of James Madison. In a public career spanning forty years, in which he served in the Virginia General Assembly, the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, the United States Congress, as secretary of state, and as president, Madison could be found at the center of events, at one time or another, either establishing, expounding, discussing, interpreting, or executing state or federal law. Even in his long retirement, he had important things to say about constitutional interpretation. In all this activity, vital to the creation and continued well-being of the early Republic, did Madison's status as a law student, but not a lawyer, matter much in his search for solutions to the persistent problems of republican self-governance?