William Rawle, who died in 1836, was a leading member of the first generation of American lawyers after independence, and his A View of the Constitution was one of the most influential books on constitutional law published before the Civil War. The book’s interest is not, however, merely historical: Rawle’s approach provides a powerful challenge to contemporary assumptions about the original meaning and ongoing significance of the Constitution. His understanding of the constitutional authority of the president — he saw it as broad yet legally bounded — is especially interesting given our current debates.