The Constitution Is Not a Relic
Why Constitutional History Demands Honest Reading and Active Citizenship
While reading We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore, two ideas lock together.
“It is for us the living” to honor the dead, and the unborn, by mending, and by making amends, so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (p.22)
That line assigns responsibility. Not to the past alone. To the present. Lepore frames constitutional history as unfinished work. To honor the dead and the unborn requires repair, acknowledgment, and amendment. Democracy survives through care, not reverence.
The book also confronts a deeper tension in how the Constitution is read. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams understood constitutionalism as contested and responsive to change. Their world demanded adaptation.
How James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams came to their view of constitutionalism, and how Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas came to a very different view in the late twentieth century, which they nonetheless claimed to belong to the late eighteenth century, is one of the stranger paradoxes of American constitutional history. It is also one of the questions that animates this book. (p.19)
Centuries later, Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas advanced a different theory while claiming fidelity to the eighteenth century. Lepore names the paradox. A modern ideology presented as original intent.
These two ideas belong together. If the Constitution is a living work, then history must be read honestly. If interpretation shapes lives, then mythmaking weakens democracy. Engagement strengthens it.
The call is clear. Participate. Question. Mend. Make amends. The work belongs to us, the living. How will you defend our democracy today?
Start reading the book for free here:
https://a.co/iRAW1Ku
Lepore, J. (2025). We the People: A History of the US Constitution. Liveright Publishing.