We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution

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