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We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
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Themes
The Limits of Constitutional Change
Throughout We the People, Lepore presents constitutional change as a process constrained by design, politics, and power rather than a steady march toward justice. From the founding onward, the Constitution’s structure both enables and restricts reform. Lepore uses the metaphor of the orrery—a mechanical model of celestial motion—to capture how the framers imagined the Constitution: a carefully calibrated system in which distinct parts orbit one another, maintaining balance through motion rather than stasis. John Adams’s articulation of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches reflects this mechanical vision. The Constitution was engineered, not discovered, and like any machine built by human hands, it was vulnerable to wear, malfunction, and the pressures of time.
Lepore’s mechanical metaphor reveals the first limit of constitutional change: repair is possible, but only through complex, deliberate intervention. Amendments were designed as the primary means of mending the system, yet Lepore repeatedly shows how difficult amendment proved in practice. Between 1804 and 1865, no amendments were ratified, despite enormous social upheaval. Slavery, territorial expansion, and demographic change strained the constitutional system beyond its intended capacity, yet the amendment process remained gridlocked. Even the abolition of slavery required civil war before the Constitution could be formally revised.
Reconstruction briefly expanded the possibilities of constitutional change, but those gains exposed new limits. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments redefined freedom and citizenship, yet their enforcement depended on political will that quickly evaporated. Women, Native nations, and many Black Americans remained outside full constitutional protection, illustrating that amendment alone could not overcome entrenched inequality. Later reform movements—such as child labor protections, women’s suffrage, and labor rights—faced similar obstacles. Even when amendments succeeded, as with suffrage, they often arrived after decades of resistance and did not guarantee meaningful equality in practice.
By the 20th century, Lepore shows that the amendment process itself became politically suspect. She notes that, “In the 1970s, the silence of the Constitution on the subject of women was met with deafening discord, a series of heated political debates over the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion that divided women and reshaped the Democratic and Republican parties and American political culture itself” (484). The Equal Rights Amendment failed not because inequality was resolved, but because consensus proved unreachable. Figures such as Birch Bayh continued to pursue amendment as a democratic necessity, yet party polarization increasingly rendered Article V impractical. By the late 20th century, Americans celebrated the Constitution while abandoning its primary mechanism for repair.
Across the book, Lepore returns to a key conclusion: the Constitution was designed to change, but not easily. Its limits are not accidental; they reflect the framers’ fear of instability as much as their faith in reason. Like the orrery, the constitutional system continues to turn, but without repair, friction accumulates. Amendment remains possible, Lepore insists, but only if Americans are willing to confront the reality that even the most carefully constructed machines require ongoing maintenance.
Constitutional Interpretation as a Political Pathway
As formal amendment proved increasingly difficult, constitutional interpretation emerged as the primary pathway for political change. Lepore shows that interpretation did not merely supplement amendment; over time, it replaced it. Courts, advocates, and movements turned to interpretation to achieve reforms that the amendment process could no longer deliver, reshaping constitutional politics in the process.
The Supreme Court’s assertion of interpretive authority in the 19th century established that constitutional meaning would not be determined solely by legislatures or the people. Decisions such as Dred Scott demonstrated the danger of this power, as interpretation was used to narrow citizenship and entrench inequality. At the same time, excluded groups—Black Americans, women, Indigenous peoples—engaged in their own acts of interpretation, drafting petitions, holding conventions, and articulating alternative constitutional visions. Interpretation became both a tool of exclusion and a language of resistance.
In the 20th century, interpretation emerged as the most viable route to reform. Lepore uses the fight for women’s rights to illustrate this transformation. While advocates such as Patsy Takemoto Mink pursued equality through amendment, Ruth Bader Ginsburg advanced a litigation strategy that reframed sex discrimination as a violation of equal protection. Her incremental victories reshaped constitutional doctrine without altering the text itself. Similarly, Brown v. Board of Education transformed civil rights by reinterpreting the Fourteenth Amendment rather than amending it, inaugurating a rights revolution through judicial action.
Lepore asserts the costs of this pathway, arguing that rights gained through interpretation are fragile, dependent on judicial composition and political climate. The backlash to Roe v. Wade illustrates how interpretive victories can provoke sustained resistance. This backlash fueled the rise of originalism, a theory that claimed to restore democratic legitimacy by anchoring meaning in the past. Lepore highlights that “Originalism did not arise from a belief that amendment was the only democratic way to change the Constitution. It arose from the failure of conservatives to change the Constitution by democratic means” (541). For example, figures such as Antonin Scalia argued that change should occur only through amendment, even as they sought to overturn precedents through judicial decision.
Lepore captures the tension at the heart of interpretive constitutionalism with the warning that “no constitution can be kept forever, like a butterfly under glass, tacked down with pins” (581). Interpretation keeps the Constitution alive, but it also concentrates power in unelected institutions. As amendment faded from practice, interpretation became both indispensable and dangerous—capable of advancing justice, yet unable to substitute fully for democratic participation.
Democracy’s Fragility in the Face of Inequality
One of Lepore’s most persistent arguments in We the People is that democracy is far more fragile than constitutional rhetoric suggests, especially when inequality is embedded in law and practice. From the founding onward, the Constitution promised popular sovereignty while systematically excluding large segments of the population. This contradiction shapes every major constitutional conflict Lepore traces, revealing democracy as a contested achievement rather than a stable condition.
Early constitutional compromises entrenched inequality through mechanisms such as the three-fifths clause and restricted suffrage. As the nation expanded, these inequalities deepened rather than disappeared. State constitutional conventions removed property requirements for white men while explicitly excluding Black voters, replacing class-based limits with racial ones. Even movements for democratic expansion often reproduced exclusion. The women’s suffrage movement, while transformative, marginalized Black women to secure white support, illustrating how inequality fractured reform from within.
Lepore examines the ways Reconstruction exposed democracy’s vulnerability to explore the impact of crisis on governmental stability. The expansion of citizenship and suffrage provoked violent resistance, judicial retreat, and legislative abandonment. Without sustained enforcement, constitutional guarantees proved hollow. Similar patterns emerged in labor reform, where courts prioritized abstract liberty over material protection, leaving children and workers vulnerable. Democracy, Lepore shows, depends not only on constitutional language but on collective commitment to enforcement and inclusion.
In the 20th century, mass democracy expanded through voting rights and federal intervention, yet inequality persisted. Brown v. Board of Education promised equal education, but widespread defiance revealed how easily democratic decisions could be undermined. Lepore emphasizes that “White supremacists’ reaction to the Court’s decision in Brown inaugurated a new era in the history of American constitutionalism. Conservatives pursued constitutional amendment as a mechanism for reversing the expansion of federal power represented by both the New Deal and the decisions of the Warren Court, beginning with Brown” (415). Journalists like Ethel Payne became essential democratic actors, exposing the gap between constitutional ideals and lived reality. Their work underscores Lepore’s claim that democracy requires witnesses as much as lawmakers.
By the 21st century, democracy’s fragility became unmistakable. Polarization, distrust in institutions, and resistance to electoral outcomes revealed how constitutional norms depend on shared belief. When citizens abandon faith in democratic processes—whether amendment, elections, or enforcement—inequality widens and authority concentrates. Lepore’s history makes clear that democracy does not fail all at once; it erodes through exclusion, apathy, and the normalization of injustice.
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