Commas in the Constitution

The reader known as Confused in the Great Midwest wrote a comment to my prior post on "Cronies."  You can read the comment by going to the highlighted area at the end of that post.  In the comment are two things:  a question about the meaning of a comma--presence of one, or the lack of one--in the section of the Constitution that was being discussed; and, a reference to a very interesting article in Vanity Fair on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

With regard to the question asked about the comma, my answer is:  I have no idea if there are any "rules of grammar" that might confer meaning on the presence or absence of a comma, but my personal opinion in this case is that it makes no difference.



However, I am aware of teachers--active and retired--in the readership of this blog, as well as others with excellent command of grammatical and syntactical rules, and would welcome thoughts on this subject from any of them.  Just scroll to the highlighted area at the end of this post or the prior one, enter the "comments" area and have at it!

By the way, I checked with another copy of the Constitution and found that the wording of this particular clause is identical, including punctuation.  For clarity, from Section 2 of Article II, here it is in its entirety:

"3. The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session."

That's a nice, clear and economical use of words.  No unnecessary words, and nothing ambiguous in what is being said.

If I had been writing that statement I would have omitted the comma that appears after the word "Senate."  It doesn't seem to serve any purpose to me.  Perhaps it was put there out of consideration for a person reading the Constitution aloud to an assembly so as to allow time for the reader to take a breath.  That wouldn't surprise me.  After all, printed material and the ability to read it was much less common in the 18th century than it is now.  If somebody else has a different opinion please let us know.

Here's the link to the Vanity Fair article:  www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/11/elizabeth-warren-201111.