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The Constitution is ink on parchment. It is forty-four hundred words. And it is, too, the accreted set of meanings that have been made of those words, the amendments, the failed amendments, the struggles, the debates—the course of events—over more than two centuries. It is not easy, but it is everyone’s. It is the rule of law, the opinions of the Court, the stripes on William Grimes’s back, a shrine in the National Archives, a sign carried on the Washington Mall, and the noise all of us make when we disagree. If the Constitution is a fiddle, it is also all the music that has ever been played on it. Some of that music is beautiful; much of it is humdrum; some of it sounds like hell.
-- Jill Lepore for The New Yorker
I suppose this overview on Constitutional history and contemporary attitudes was spurred by the Republicans' theatrical call to have it read aloud when they took control of the House. Part of the power of the Constitution may be the sparseness and vagueness that allows it to be all things to all people.
-- Jill Lepore for The New Yorker
I suppose this overview on Constitutional history and contemporary attitudes was spurred by the Republicans' theatrical call to have it read aloud when they took control of the House. Part of the power of the Constitution may be the sparseness and vagueness that allows it to be all things to all people.
