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By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock New* Staff Writer
“It’s a time to reflect,” noted Attorney Doug Baumgardner, ”to think about America and what has made it great. We owe much to our Constitution; our prosperity as a people, to the fact that the Constitution’s integrity has been maintained over 200 years.”
Mr. Baumgardner offered some reflections of his own during a Bicentennial observance held last Thursday in Rappahannock County Circuit Court. A recess was called by Judge W. Shore Robertson at 11 a.m. to mark the Constitution’s 200th birthday. All of Virginia’s courts recessed at that time, and a proclamatiom was read in honor of the occasion.
Mr. Baumgardner said that our political stability can be traced to the Constitution’s presence during the entire history of the country. “Look at the track records of other nations: one-half of the independent states in the world have had more than one constitution since World War II. Syria and Thailand have had nine each in the last 40 years.
“It is remarkable that we have functioned under one for the last 200 years — and that ours was the first of all.” He told the group of about two dozen county residents gathered in the courtroom that America’s Constitution served as the model for others: for Poland, in 1791 the second country to adopt a democratic constitution. Later that year, France became the third country, also using America’s document as a model.
“We owe our freedoms in so many ways to the Constitution— we encounter them every day... freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to associate with whomever we please, freedom from search and seizure.”
Those freedoms, Mr. Baumgardner added, are among the issues being debated during the current confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork, nominated by President Reagan to serve on the Supreme Court. “It is remarkable that the debate is taking place in the context that it is — that we can be debating the different aspects of the issues rather than whether they exist at all.”
The Washington attorney, who is well-known as a scholar of legal history, added that “we would be remiss if we did not note the role that Virginia played in the formation and ratification” of the Constitution. Virginia, Mr. Baumgardner pointed out, was the largest state in the Union in 1787, encompassing a land area as large as the six New England states combined — with a population of 800,000.
The Virginia Convention of 1788 provided the first debate of the new Constitution, and some of Virginia’s most famous sons played pivotal roles. George Mason of Fairfax _wa8 a leading opponent of ratification, while James Madison and “Lighthorse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, were outspoken in favor, of the document.
Edmund Randolph, who opposed the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention, changed his mind — reportedly because of the influence of George Washington — and backed its ratification at Virginia’s convention. Mr. Randolph went on to serve as the first Attorney General of the United States.
The arguments of Patrick Henry, Mr. Baum
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