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This is not rocket science. Here is yet another explanation (footnotes omitted, from yet another Harvard lawyer, Robert K. Landis):

* * *

We often hear pundits and politicians talk about “strict construction.” This is a phrase introduced as a campaign slogan by Richard Nixon. It’s a sort of code, signifying a “conservative” — as opposed to an “activist” — judicial philosophy. It has no real legal meaning, but is popularly understood to refer to interpreting and applying the Constitution according to the plain meaning of the words and the original intent of the Founders.[5]

The reality is, particularly with respect to its monetary provisions, the Constitution is a dead letter. There is not a “strict constructionist” anywhere near a position of real power and influence in Washington. In the words of Rep. Ron Paul, a tireless champion of sound money and one of the authors of the Minority Report[6]:

Perhaps no important document is held in less regard in Washington, D.C., than the United States Constitution. In fact, the attitude of many Congressmen and government officials toward the Constitution consists of giving lip service to it by refusing to take it seriously. It is considered obsolete, written for agrarian economies; and our highly technological society has supposedly moved far beyond its limits. It is to be referred to only when convenient and ignored when inconvenient.

This official disregard goes with the institutional territory. As the Minority Report observed (p.243):

The present monetary arrangements of the United States are unconstitutional-even anti-constitutional-from top to bottom. / The Constitution actually says very little about what sort of monetary system the United States ought to have, but what it does say is unmistakably clear.

They got that right. Consider, for example, what the Constitution says about federal power to issue paper money and establish a central bank:

ARTICLE I, Section 8. The Congress shall have Power * * *

Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States * * * .

ARTICLE I, Section 9.

Clause 7: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law * * *.

Notice anything odd here?

That’s right, it doesn’t say anything about paper money, let alone central banking.

With respect to central banking, the Minority Report observed (pp. 261-262):

By a strict interpretation of the Constitution, one of the most unconstitutional (if there are degrees of unconstitutionality) of federal agencies is the Federal Reserve. The Constitution grants no power to the Congress to set up such an institution, and the Fed is the major cause of our present monetary problems. The alleged constitutional authority stems from a loose and imaginative interpretation of the implied powers clause.

This raises a point that is critical to interpreting the Constitution, strictly or otherwise: what the Constitution doesn’t say is just as important as what it does say. That’s because every power exercised by government has to have a root authorization in the Constitution. Any power that is not delegated is withheld. That’s the genius of the limited state conceived by the Founders.[7]

Strict construction, anyone?

What Part of “No Authority” Don’t They Get?

With respect to the issuance of paper money, the lack of authority is even more egregious, because this was something the Founders specifically considered, and knowingly rejected.

Here it’s helpful to recall that the Constitution did not spring whole from the Founders’ foreheads at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. It was a carefully studied — and extensively debated — successor to an original charter known as the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles had been adopted ten years earlier, shortly after the outbreak of the Revolution, and had formally governed relations among the states since 1781. In today’s terms, the Articles were something of a cross between a customs union and a multilateral treaty of friendship, navigation and commerce among sovereign states. They provided for a rather weak central governance committee known as Congress.

This earlier charter had proved inadequate in a number of respects. The Constitution was intended to correct its deficiencies. So if we’re interested in understanding the Founders’ intent with respect to particular provisions of the Constitution, it is relevant to consider what it was they were trying to fix.

Have a look at the predecessor version of the language quoted above relating to paper money, as set forth in the original Articles (emphasis supplied):

IX. * * * The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority * * * to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States * * * .

Although the words used in these old documents carry slightly different meanings today, their original meaning should be clear enough to a “strict constructionist.” We see here that the Articles had given Congress the explicit power to issue paper money, so-called “bills of credit.”[8] The states also had that power, by virtue of the fact that the Articles nowhere said they didn’t: the Articles were emphatic that any power not specifically delegated to the Congress was retained by the sovereign states.

During the American Revolution, both Congress in the notorious Continental currency[9], and the several states in a profusion of paper currency and debt certificates[10], had duly exercised this power. The result was a monetary disaster.[11] The delegates, who had come to Philadelphia from their home states that were suffering varying degrees of financial and economic distress, were determined to implement a lasting monetary reform.[12]

And one of the first things they did in this reform document, right there in Article I, was take away from Congress the power to issue paper money, by deleting the language “or emit bills.”[13]

Strict construction, anyone?

A Money Measured by Weight

There’s more.

Have a look at what the Constitution says about what money is permissible.

ARTICLE I, Section 8. The Congress shall have Power * * *

Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the standard of Weights and Measures * * *

ARTICLE I, Section 10.

Clause 1: No State shall * * * coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts * * * .

Here we see the heart of the monetary provisions in the Constitution.

In clause 1 of Section 10, it’s pretty clear what’s going on, to judicial activist and strict constructionist alike.

First, we see that the states lost their power to coin money.

Second, we see that the states were explicitly denied the power to issue paper money.

Third, we see that the states were denied the power to make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender — which would include, by the way, anything issued by the federal government.[14]

It’s clause 5 of Article I that seems to offer some wiggle room to the champions of paper money. We see that money is something that’s coined, not printed, and that, as such, it is properly lumped in with weights and measures. But doesn’t the power to coin money suggest some sort of “implied power” to print paper as well?

No. Not, at any rate, to anyone concerned with the plain meaning of the words:[15]

Coins are pieces of metal, of definite weight and value, thus stamped by national authority. Such is the natural import of the terms “to coin money” and “coin;” and if there were any doubt that this is their meaning in the Constitution, it would be removed by the language which immediately follows the grant of the “power to coin” authorizing Congress to regulate the value of the money thus coined, and also “of foreign coin,” and by the distinction made in other clauses between coin and the obligations of the general government and of the several states.

What about that language, “regulate the value thereof”? Doesn’t that give Congress carte blanche to do whatever it wants regarding our money?

No. Not, at any rate, to anyone viewing money as metal with weight and fineness, which is to say, anyone present at the Constitutional Convention, or anyone who now fancies himself a “strict constructionist.”[16]

The power of regulation conferred is the power to determine the weight and purity of the several coins struck, and their consequent relation to the monetary unit which might be established by the authority of the government - a power which can be exercised with reference to the metallic coins of foreign countries, but which is incapable of execution with reference to their obligations or securities.

And that’s all there is. That’s the sum total of the core monetary provisions of the Constitution.[17] In these few words, men of courage and genius gave us a charter of monetary freedom never equaled before or since.[18]

Strict construction, anyone?