Norming subspace of a dual space ($c\Vert x\Vert \le {\sup }_{z\in Z,\Vert z\Vert \le 1}|z(x)|$)

A vector subspace $Z\subseteq X^{\ast }$ is norming if some $c>0$ satisfies the displayed inequality. It retains enough continuous linear functionals to control the norm of every vector. Every such vector subspace is dense for the weak-star topology: otherwise a nonzero evaluation linear functional would annihilate its weak-star closure, contradicting the inequality. In the real case its symmetric unit ball makes the absolute-value and signed supremum versions equivalent.

Finite truncations of the sign or phase sequence of $x\in {\ell }^1$ belong to $c_0$ and attain increasing partial sums of ${\sum }_n|x_n|$. Thus the space of sequences converging to zero is 1-norming for the absolutely summable sequence space. Its codimension in ${\ell }^{\infty }$ is infinite: indicators of pairwise disjoint infinite subsets have linearly independent classes modulo $c_0$. Norming does not require finite codimension.

A norm-closed finite-codimensional vector subspace $Y\subseteq X^{\ast }$ that is weak-star dense is a norming subspace. Its annihilator $F=Y^{\perp }\subseteq X^{\ast \ast }$ is finite-dimensional and disjoint from $JX$. The positive distance $d$ of the unit sphere from $F$ gives a triple-dual linear functional vanishing on $F$ and taking a value at least $d$ at a unit vector. Apply the finite-dimensional interpolation form of Goldstine's theorem to the Banach space $X^{\ast }$, then normalize and take a supremum to obtain norming constant $d$.