The first volume of Max Farrand’s 1911 documentary edition of the Constitutional Convention. Bork cited two accounts of Randolph’s speech on defects of the Confederation; source notes identify the recorders and preserve Finzer’s later reversal.
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
Volume 1 · 1911
1 The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (Max Farrand ed., 1911)
Phillips Academy, Oliver Wendell Holmes Library; digitized by the Internet Archive with Abbot Academy Fund sponsorship. No missing numbered content identified in Volume I; other volumes are not included. Volume I only; this acquisition does not complete the three-volume 1911 set. The 1787 statements are reproduced in a 1911 documentary edition. Farrand is the editor; Randolph is the speaker. The checked 1911 page 25 prints “be invaded,” while the Finzer transcriptions on Justia and Neochart print “are invaded.” Citation identity and the underlying proposition are verified; word-for-word quotation fidelity to the historical source is not claimed. A printed Finzer reporter facsimile was not inspected. Affirmed in part and reversed in part by Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 329–34 (1988). The display clause was held unconstitutional; the congregation clause survived as narrowly construed. The cited historical passages are verified, but this does not endorse Finzer’s overturned display-clause holding.
Open reader → Download this PDF
Source repository ↗
Use in constitutional interpretation
Robert H. Bork · Opinion for the court
Finzer v. Barry, 798 F.2d 1450, 1456–57 (D.C. Cir. 1986).
Bork uses two accounts of Edmund Randolph’s May 29, 1787 speech to explain the Confederation’s inability to punish treaty violations and invasions of ambassadors’ rights. Page 19 belongs to Randolph’s supplied abstract within Madison’s record; page 25 is McHenry’s account. The source prints “be invaded,” while the checked Finzer transcriptions print “are invaded.” Finzer’s display-clause ruling was later reversed in Boos v. Barry; its narrowed congregation clause survived.
Read printed 19, 25 →
The title and copyright pages establish the 1911 edition, Volume I. Max Farrand is the editor, not the author of Randolph’s 1787 statements.
Printed page 19 is PDF page 51; printed page 25 is PDF page 57. An unnumbered plate later changes the main-text offset.
Page 19 is Randolph’s supplied abstract within Madison’s record; page 25 is McHenry’s account.
Farrand prints “be invaded” at page 25; the checked Finzer transcriptions print “are invaded.” The historical wording controls quotations from Farrand.
Affirmed in part and reversed in part by Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 329–34 (1988). The display clause was held unconstitutional; the congregation clause survived as narrowly construed.
