We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
61 pages • 2-hour read
Jill LeporeWe the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
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Introduction-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Invention of the Constitution, 1774-1791”
Introduction Summary: “The Philosophy of Amendment”
From the beginning of her work, Lepore establishes the Constitution as a living document that is intended to account for change. She relates the Constitution to all of life: We the people. The Constitution of the United States is made of things that are born, live, thrive, decay, and die: insects, animals, plants, ideas” (1). Lepore constructs her work as a chronological history of the document, beginning with ancient establishments of law and government. The Sumerian Code and written law from the Zhou Dynasty in the sixth century BCE reveal the necessity for establishing rules and expectations for people within a society. However, it was not until Catherine the Great began implementing the Nakaz (a document written between 1764 and 1766 as a guide for legislators to craft a new Russian code of law) that the concept of laws as checks for rulers came into the Western world. Soon after, in 1776, the United States declared independence and simultaneously guaranteed rights for its people and a system of checks and balances on governmental power.
Lepore shows that the United States’ early founders, including James Madison, saw the U.S. Constitution as something that needed amendment and updating. James Wilson called the alterability of the Constitution its “vital principle.” After all, change was an early and essential part of America’s roots. As the Constitution and the United States co-existed, it quickly became clear that the document would need to be a part of the American tradition of evolution and reinvention. Often, calls for amendment came from ordinary citizens who recognized a disparity between the document and reality.
Article V, which outlines the process by which the U.S. Constitution can be amended and ratified, was intended to provide a way for future changes, but Lepore critiques the instability of its methods. There are two ways to propose an amendment: Congress can introduce one, or state legislatures can call for a national convention to propose changes. After an amendment is proposed, it must be ratified by three-quarters of the states, either through their legislatures or through special state conventions. This two-step process makes constitutional change possible but intentionally difficult.
Lepore argues that although Article V was designed as a flexible mechanism for correcting and improving the Constitution, it has proven far more difficult to use than the framers anticipated.
She explains that constitutional amendments tend to occur only during moments of national crisis, particularly war. The Bill of Rights followed the Revolutionary War, and the Reconstruction Amendments followed the Civil War. As amendment became increasingly unworkable in the 20th century, political actors across the ideological spectrum abandoned Article V in favor of other routes to constitutional change. Liberals turned to the courts and judicial interpretation, while conservatives—after repeated failures to pass amendments on issues like school prayer, flag burning, the boundaries of marriage, and balanced budgets—ultimately did the same. The result, Lepore suggests, is a constitutional system that no longer evolves through formal amendment but instead through judicial power, leaving Article V largely unused.
Judicial action became the power through which both liberals and conservatives achieved change, and the Supreme Court gained greater influence. Historically, when the Supreme Court was conservative, liberals would reject its authority. The same pattern emerged when the opposite positions were held. Both Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln rejected the Supreme Court’s wielded authority. In 1954, Sam Ervin accused liberals of using the Supreme Court to expedite their agenda through Brown v. Board of Education. Since its construction, only 27 amendments have successfully been applied to the U.S. Constitution. What Lepore calls the “philosophy of amendment”—the idea that the Constitution’s ability to evolve is its survival—is the driving force of the cycles of forward change and regression that shape the pattern of U.S. history (15).
Originalists, those who interpret the Constitution to mean that only Article V may be used to make amendments, did not emerge until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Bork advanced this history, and originalism was born. Lepore asserts that the constrictions of Article V have entirely stalled its use in the modern age, and that originalists have shaped an argument around ideals that the framers of the Constitution, including James Madison, never intended.
Part 1, Introduction Summary
Lepore opens Part 1 with a celebratory scene. A parade was held on the streets of Philadelphia on the Fourth of July 1788, celebrating both the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the ratification of the Constitution. Although Article V calls for only three-quarters of states’ approval, the United States was new, with only 13 states, making anything other than a unanimous decision a catalyst for a deeply fractured union. Even as states agreed, they did so with proposed additional amendments for further review by Congress. Virginia became the tenth state to ratify, offering 40 amendments to the congressional floor.
The people gathered on the streets to celebrate. Floats in the parade urged the other states to follow suit. When the parade concluded, James Wilson stood before a crowd of 17,000 people and declared the ratification of the Constitution a victory of the People, a first-of-its-kind structure that was unlike any other form of government. Not everyone was pleased with the progress. During celebrations, anti-federalists burned copies of the Constitution, and fights broke out.
The First Congress met in 1789, busy building a new country and facing more than 200 proposed amendments. Only ten of these were ratified in two years. Although this number is low, Americans had worse luck passing their proposed amendments, and many groups were not included in the Constitution’s original interpretation of the People: “the poor, women, children, the enslaved, servants, Indians, free Black men—anyone deemed a dependent, insufficiently independent to participate in politics, unable to govern themselves, and needing, instead, to be governed” (30).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Constitution of a Clock”
Lepore frames the development of the Constitution with the narrative of the Great Boston Fire of 1787. While a hundred buildings went up in flames and people worked tirelessly to put out the fire with buckets of water, a few men went on a mission to save one piece of machinery. Joseph Pope had built an orrery—a clocklike mechanical model of the solar system which showed how all the orbits worked together in a cosmic dance. This scientific principle greatly influenced the authors and thinkers who formed the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton compared the science of politics to an orbit that must continuously be enlarged. The framers saw the Constitution as a mechanism—one that would balance the powers of government. Like a machine, the document would also need repairing as time and human error revealed themselves.
When Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 6, 1775, they sent a directive to the colonies to make haste and build their state governments. The 13 states engaged in an arduous process of determining who should design their constitutions, who should ratify them, and what they should contain.
James Bowdoin, a Massachusetts politician who had led the effort to rescue Pope’s orrery, saw Pope’s machine as a symbol of the higher ideals that a written Constitution could manifest in a new country. Bowdoin, John Adams, and other future signers of the U.S. Constitution were first highly involved in the writing of constitutions for their individual colonies. Often, these constitutions evolved through experimentation and re-examination. After long deliberations and protests, the Massachusetts’ constitution became the model for the U.S. Constitution.
Meanwhile, those who were not wealthy, white landowners fought for their own voices to be heard in these newly established state and federal governments. Property rights for voting, slavery, and the ability to amend the states’ constitutions were central topics of discussion. Figures like Paul and John Coffey, two influential business owners whose mother was from the Wampanoag tribe and father was an enslaved man who had been born in West Africa, used the same argument that Americans held up to British imperialists: no taxation without representation. Debates in the 13 states led to the development of four important components necessary for a constitution: “a constitutional convention, a bill of rights, a ratifying process, and an amendment procedure” (51).
By the time Congress ratified the Articles of the Confederation, so much time had passed that they already needed amendment. The document required all 13 states to agree to ratify an amendment, a high bar that was nearly impossible to reach. This period of contention and argument paved the way for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. The difficult development of the Constitution proved the need for the document to be repaired, like the mechanisms of an orrery.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “All Men Would Be Tyrants”
Lepore takes a closer look at the term “people” and how it is interpreted by the designers of the Constitution. The framers were white, wealthy landowners, and marginalized groups were eager to ensure that the liberties the United States offered would be extended to everyone, regardless of race or sex. Influential women like Anne Willing Bingham, Abigail Adams (the wife of John Adams), and Jane Mecom (Benjamin Franklin’s sister) urged the men they knew with influence to consider the freedom of women in their political deliberations, as well as a red line against any kind of violence. Women organized their own female Congress, an event that was dismissed and ridiculed by the press.
Lepore argues that the very discussions surrounding the Constitution were rooted in discrimination, noting that “The rule of men over women is written into American constitutionalism” (73). Tyranny was associated with rape, and depictions of rape were often used as metaphors in political writing and satire. When Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband, asking him to consider the plight of women and suggesting to him that women might rebel if they had no representation in the law. John Adams only laughed at his wife, but he was quick to reach out to his contacts and express his concerns about a growing disrespect for authority. In a letter to a friend, he responded to public approval for removing property restrictions from voting rights. He argued that allowing men in poverty to vote would become a slippery slope: soon women would be demanding a vote as well.
Debates were greatly influenced by the different states’ ideologies, individual holdings of power, and an imbalanced voting system founded on discrimination. Women were included when calculating population, but they were not granted the right to vote or positions as free citizens. Enslaved Black men, women, and children were counted as three-fifths of free people in the population but were granted no vote. Therefore, women and children were considered the property of white men whose votes were made more powerful by a census that favored them, despite the disparity between population and representation. Although the Constitution treated Indigenous peoples of North America as sovereign nations, its wording allowed for the continued colonization.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Every Gentleman May Propose Amendments”
Lepore explores how the U.S. Constitution was contested from the moment of its creation, emphasizing that disagreement shaped both its ratification and its amendment process. The chapter opens with Thomas Jefferson’s argument that no generation has the right to bind the next, proposing that constitutions should be revised regularly. James Madison rejected this view, fearing instability and mob rule, and instead defended a Constitution designed to endure. This foundational disagreement reveals an early tension between democratic participation and political control.
Lepore details the ratification debates of 1787—1788, showing how Anti-Federalists across states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York objected to the Constitution’s concentration of power, unequal representation, and lack of explicit protections for individual liberties. Petitions, pamphlets, and newspaper essays—often written under pseudonyms—became key tools for public engagement. Although only propertied white men could vote or serve as delegates, others still participated politically. Quakers petitioned against slavery, free Black Americans protested their exclusion from citizenship, and women circulated arguments and critiques through informal networks.
The chapter closely examines Article V and the amendment process. Lepore notes that while the framers claimed amendments were possible, the process was intentionally difficult, requiring overwhelming political consensus. This design reflected fear of popular sovereignty rather than trust in it. Pressure to add a Bill of Rights became crucial to ratification, particularly in closely divided states, exposing the Constitution as a conditional and unfinished document rather than a settled framework. Ultimately, Lepore argues that constitutional authority emerged through compromise, exclusion, and sustained dissent. The right to propose amendments—even when denied to many—became a symbol of democratic aspiration.
Introduction-Part 1 Analysis
Lepore’s opening chapters in We the People offer a central paradox of American constitutionalism: the Constitution was designed to change, yet it was built to resist change. This paradox animates three interlocking themes that shape her argument from the outset: The Limits of Constitutional Change, Constitutional Interpretation as a Political Pathway, and Democracy’s Fragility in the Face of Inequality. Together, these themes reveal the Constitution as a contested structure whose authority has always depended on exclusion, interpretation, and struggle.
Lepore frames amendment not as a technical process but as a governing philosophy. As she writes, “Amendment is so essential to the American constitutional tradition, so methodical and so entire a conception of endurance through adaptation, that it can best be described as a philosophy” (2). This philosophy, however, is riddled with contradiction. While amendment is treated as essential to the Constitution’s legitimacy, the mechanisms designed to enable it repeatedly fail the people most affected by constitutional injustice. From the earliest debates over ratification, the promise of change exists alongside a persistent fear of popular power.
Lepore’s early chapters demonstrate that constitutional change has always been possible in theory and constrained in practice, emphasizing the limits of constitutional change. Article V, which outlines the amendment process, is presented by the framers as a flexible safeguard against error, yet its two-step structure—proposal followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states—creates nearly insurmountable barriers. Lepore emphasizes that this difficulty was not accidental. The framers feared instability, mob rule, and what they perceived as the volatility of democratic participation. As a result, constitutional change was deliberately slowed, filtered, and contained. This limitation becomes clear almost immediately after ratification. The First Congress faced more than 200 proposed amendments, many of which reflected public concerns about representation, rights, and power. Only ten were adopted. While this outcome produced the Bill of Rights, it also revealed the narrow scope of change the new system would tolerate.
The framers were familiar with John Locke’s work and The Two Treatises of Government, within which Locke compares tyranny to rape. Women like Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, an 18th-century philosopher who admired the U.S. Constitution, challenged conventional ideas about sex and gender and argued that the document did not go far enough. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Shelley argues that the very idea that men can be free is inconsistent with the status of women. Groups excluded from the Constitution’s definition of “the People”—women, the poor, free Black Americans, the enslaved, Indigenous nations, and children—had no formal means of shaping the document, even as their lives were profoundly shaped by it.
Lepore further illustrates these limits by tracing how meaningful constitutional change tends to occur only during moments of national crisis. The Revolutionary War produced the Bill of Rights; the Civil War produced the Reconstruction Amendments. Outside of such ruptures, Article V becomes effectively dormant. As the 20th century progresses and amendment becomes increasingly unworkable, political actors abandon the process altogether. The Constitution endures, but its capacity for self-correction narrows, revealing a system designed to survive even at the expense of justice.
As formal amendment becomes less viable, Lepore shows that constitutional interpretation emerges as an alternative route to change, highlighting the theme of constitutional interpretation as a political pathway. Courts—particularly the Supreme Court—become the primary arena through which political conflicts are resolved. This shift fundamentally alters the balance of power. Instead of constitutional meaning being reshaped through collective political action, it is increasingly determined by judicial interpretation.
Lepore is careful to show that this development is neither neutral nor consistent. Both liberals and conservatives turn to the courts when legislative avenues fail. When the Supreme Court aligns with their goals, it is praised as a guardian of constitutional principles; when it does not, its authority is challenged or rejected. This pattern appears repeatedly throughout American history. Figures such as Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln openly contested Supreme Court decisions when they believed those rulings undermined justice or democracy.
The rise of originalism in the late 20th century further illustrates how interpretation becomes a political strategy. By insisting that constitutional meaning is fixed and that only Article V can authorize change, originalists construct a theory that appears to limit judicial power while, in practice, reinforcing it. Lepore argues that this framework misrepresents the intentions of the framers, many of whom believed amendment and reinterpretation were necessary for the Constitution’s survival. Originalism thus becomes less a faithful reading of history than a modern response to the perceived instability of democratic change.
Through these examples, Lepore reframes interpretation as a political pathway—one that allows constitutional meaning to shift without formally altering the text. This pathway, however, concentrates power in institutions far removed from popular participation, raising questions about who truly governs in a constitutional democracy.
Underlying both the limits of amendment and the turn toward interpretation is Lepore’s sustained attention to democracy’s fragility in the face of inequality. From the beginning, American democracy is shown to rest on exclusions that weaken its moral and political foundations. The framers’ definition of “the People” was narrow and hierarchical, shaped by assumptions about property, dependency, race, and gender. Those excluded were nevertheless counted, taxed, governed, and punished by the system they could not influence.
Lepore’s analysis of gender reveals how deeply inequality was embedded in constitutional thought. She notes that the rule of men over women was not a social accident but a constitutional assumption. Women were invoked symbolically—as metaphors for tyranny, vulnerability, and disorder—while being denied political agency. Even as women organized, petitioned, and wrote, their efforts were dismissed as illegitimate or dangerous, reifying patriarchal power. Their inclusion in population counts without corresponding rights intensified the imbalance of power, amplifying the political influence of white male property owners.
Racial inequality functioned in similar ways. Enslaved people were counted for purposes of representation but denied freedom, citizenship, or voice. Indigenous nations were simultaneously treated as sovereign and subjected to colonization. These contradictions allowed the Constitution to expand federal power while preserving systems of domination. Lepore demonstrates that inequality was not merely tolerated by the Constitution—it structured it.
This fragility becomes especially visible in moments of dissent. Anti-Federalists, Quakers, women, and free Black Americans all identified the gap between constitutional ideals and lived reality. Their critiques exposed the vulnerability of a democracy that claims universal principles while denying universal participation. The persistence of these critiques, even when ignored or suppressed, underscores Lepore’s argument that democratic legitimacy depends not on endurance alone, but on the capacity to confront injustice.
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