This chapter concludes the discussion of interpretation by focusing on the emotions and mental processes of the interpreter. Each case presents at least one dilemma that cannot be solved through pure legal deduction. What options, then, does the interpreter have? First, they will seek the illusory comfort of legal objectivity, and convince themselves that the answer is out there, buried somewhere in the record. But it is not. Second, the interpreter will try to exercise responsible agency and provide an answer that best resonates with their ethical or political commitments. But the interpreter does not really know which interpretive outcome is preferable. Third, the interpreter will turn to the standard practices of the community and write pages upon pages of corollary analysis, hoping that the intractable issue will magically vanish. Finally, the interpreter will stick to their decision and defend it as the sole logical solution.

I live in Longmont, Colorado, on the western edge of the Great Plains. Settlers from Chicago founded the modern city of Longmont in 1871 by the St. Vrain River (a generous term for a small watercourse), adjacent to the slightly older community of Burlington (Estes et al. 1971). Longmont has grown since then from a population of a couple of hundred to a community of nearly 100,000. My city’s many amenities include Sandstone Ranch, a park just east of town that includes athletic fields, a wildlife refuge, and an elegant late-19th-century home that a pioneer named Morse Coffin built at the base of a sandstone cliff overlooking the St. Vrain.

examines the development of Black citizenship, beginning with a stark reminder that blacks had no access to national citizenship rights in the antebellum period, even though there were more than 435,000 free Blacks living in the United States at the time of the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott ruling. The Framers’ Constitution had accommodated the interests and demands of slaveholding states at the time of ratification and thus gave much greater power to states than the federal government in setting citizenship rights. The constitutional framework structuring black citizenship changed significantly after the Civil War, as new forms of regressive state citizenship emerged against the backdrop of Reconstruction and decades of Jim Crow, followed by rapid changes in the Civil Rights period that continues until today. Throughout this chapter, the authors train their focus on the role of the Constitution and courts in defining and constraining Black citizenship rights, as well as the role of parties and social movement actors in propelling legislative action toward rights expansion and contraction.