Arts & Entertainment
New Book Makes the Case for a Constitution That Was Intended to Be Amended
Author and historian Jill Lepore’s new book “We The People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” breathes new life into the idea that the Constitution is a living, evolving document.
The book examines the political gridlock that has left many voters disillusioned with both parties and skeptical of the government’s ability to solve problems. Lepore suggests more frequent changes to the constitutional system as a possible alternative.
Passing a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and approval from three-fourths of the states — a process made more difficult by the rise of political parties and polarization the founders never anticipated, according to Lepore.
“When the framers met, there were no political parties in the United States, nor did they anticipate there ever would be … so they really couldn’t have anticipated the polarization that the country is in now,” Lepore said.
Lepore’s book challenges originalism — a legal theory that gained traction in the 1980s and early 2000s and is embraced by many conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices — which holds that judges should interpret the Constitution as the founders intended when it was written.
Originalism has played a role in several recent Supreme Court cases, most notably the 2022 Dobbs decision, which returned the issue of abortion rights to the states.
“There’s no evidence that the framers of the Constitution intended for the Constitution to be read in this way,” Lepore said. “There was no commandment from on high that thou shalt defer to our notes on the Constitutional Convention or the Federalist Papers. The kinds of things that originalists actually use exclusively to interpret the meaning of the Constitution are not available in any meaningful way until digitization.”
A professor at Harvard University, Lepore got the idea for the book following a project she began with her students and other researchers.
The Amend Project chronicles the more than 11,000 failed constitutional amendments that were introduced on the U.S. House floor between 1789 and 2021.
“It’s free and online and anyone can look at it and you can put in a topic and pull up all the proposals that have ever been made — introduced on the floor of Congress or in petitions to Congress to amend the Constitution,” Lepore said.
Studying failed constitutional amendments helps historians understand the nation’s mood at different points in time and puts today’s so-called radical ideas in perspective, showing that even bolder proposals have surfaced throughout history, according to Lepore.
“In the progressive era people wanted to abolish the Senate,” Lepore said. “They’re failed ideas and maybe they’re worth forgetting. From the point of view of a historian they’re not worth forgetting. We need to archive them, and we need to be able to study. There’s a lot to be discovered in the patterns — which parts of the country want which things and at which times.”
