Much of the day-to-day work of implementing constitutional law falls to the executive actors. Ministers, policy advisers, public servants, government agencies, government lawyers, and legislative draftspersons develop public policy and legislation within the shadow of the constitution. The first contribution of this article is to advance a normative model to guide the work of these actors. It accepts the primacy of judicial review, but nonetheless supposes significant space for the other branches of government to engage normatively with the constitution. In particular, we argue that areas of constitutional “uncertainty” present the executive with space for particularly lively engagement with the constitution. In these spaces, the executive should have institutional confidence to engage more autonomously with constitutional norms. [---]