Lambertus DeRonde, Translation, and the Context of Public Meaning

To get at the original public meaning of the Constitution, it would be helpful if we could get into the mind of an everyday contemporary, a Joe the Ploughman, as it were.[1] In my research, I came across the best example we might hope to find. His name was Lambertus De Ronde, a Reformed Church minister living near Albany, N.Y. in 1788 when he translated the U.S. Constitution into Dutch.