America's Constitution: A Biography

717 Pages·2006·4.41 MB·English

by  Akhil Reed Amar

Praise for A C
MERICA’S ONSTITUTION
“As a reference book, it is superb. It is the fullest and most reliable
explanation of the written Constitution that we have. [Amar’s] case for
the fundamentally popular and democratic origins of the Constitution
gives his book a special distinction as a work of history.”
—G S. W
ORDON OOD
“Scholarly, reflective and brimming with ideas … Rarely do you find a
book that embodies scholarship at its most solid and invigorating; this is
such a book.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The most fascinating character in American history—our enduring
Constitution—finally has its great and deserving biographer. And what a
biographer Akhil Reed Amar is! He writes like Jefferson, thinks like
Madison, and speaks like Lincoln. Everyone who appreciates the
Constitution must read this wonderful biography. It is indispensable to
an understanding of the constitutional world in which we live.”
—A D , author of Preemption
LAN ERSHOWITZ
“Few biographies are as important or as gripping as Akhil Reed Amar’s
life story of our constitution. A powerful narrative as well as an
indispensable research tool, America’s Constitution returns the document
to its rightful place at the center of our legal and political history.”
—J T , author of A Vast Conspiracy and Too Close to Call
EFFREY OOBIN
“A new and richer understanding of the prosaic founding text we
routinely worship but rarely examine … No scholar writing today is
more sensitive to the nuances of constitutional language than Amar, and
his book is full of close and thoughtful analyses.”
—The Nation
“There is no more inspiring teacher of constitutional law in America
than Akhil Reed Amar, and now all Americans will have the benefit of
his scholarship, creativity, and infectious love for the Constitution. It’s
hard to imagine a more exciting guide to the text and history of the
Constitution than this unique, surprising, and illuminating book. A tour
de force that should find a wide readership for years to come.”
—J R , author of The Unwanted Gaze and The Naked Crowd
EFFREY OSEN
“An extraordinary and unique contribution to the scholarship of the
Constitution.”
—M G , author of Courting Disaster
ARTIN ARBUS

2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition Copyright © 2005 by Akhil Reed Amar All rights
reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The
Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Amar, Akhil Reed.
America’s constitution: a biography / Akhil Reed Amar.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836487-6
1. Constitutional history—United States. I. Title.
KF4541.A87 2005
342.7302’9—dc22 2004061464
www.atrandom.com
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
PREFACE
1. I B
N THE EGINNING
2. N R N W
EW ULES FOR A EW ORLD
3. C P
ONGRESSIONAL OWERS
4. A F O
MERICA’S IRST FFICER
5. P P
RESIDENTIAL OWERS
6. J J
UDGES AND URIES
7. S T
TATES AND ERRITORIES
8. T L L
HE AW OF THE AND
9. M A
AKING MENDS
10. A N B F
EW IRTH OF REEDOM
11. P R
ROGRESSIVE EFORMS
12. M M
ODERN OVES
POSTSCRIPT
APPENDIX: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
For Vinita, of course,
and for our children—Vik, Kara, and Sara.
May they and their generation continue to enjoy the blessings of liberty.
Preface
America’s Constitution Beckons—a New World Acropolis open to all.
Ordained in the name of the American people, repeatedly amended by
them and for them, the document also addresses itself to them. It does
its work in strikingly clean prose (as law goes) and with notable brevity.
Its full text, including amendments, runs less than eight thousand words,
a half hour’s read for the earnest citizen. The document’s style thus
invites us to explore its substance, to visit and regularly revisit America’s
legal city on a hill.
Most citizens have declined the invitation. Many could probably recite
at length from some favorite poem, song, speech, or scripture, yet few
could quote by heart even a single paragraph of the supreme law of our
land, one of the most important texts in world history. Lawyers,
politicians, journalists, and opinion leaders converse fluently about legal
dictums and doctrines that appear nowhere in the Constitution itself
while slighting many intriguing words and concepts that do appear in
the document. For instance, we rarely stop to think about what lay
beneath the Constitution’s promise of a “more perfect Union,” or why
the Founders required presidents to be at least thirty-five years old, or
how the Fourteenth Amendment built upon earlier bans on “Titles of
Nobility” when it made everyone “born” in America a “citizen[].”
University professors who teach constitutional law often neglect to
assign the document itself. The running joke is that reading the thing
would only confuse students. The joke captures an important truth.
Without background materials placing the Constitution in context, a
modern reader may miss much of its meaning and richness.
This book seeks to reacquaint twenty-first-century Americans with the
written Constitution. In the pages that follow, I invite readers to join me
on an interpretive journey through the document, from its first words to
its last clause. Along the way, we shall explore not merely what the
Constitution says, but also how and why it says these things. How did
various provisions at the Founding intermesh to form larger patterns of
meaning and structures of decision making? How did later generations
of constitutional Amenders reconfigure the system? Why did the
Founders and Amenders act as they did? What lessons did they deduce
from the distant past and from their own experiences? Which historically
available models did they copy, and which plausible alternatives did
they overlook or reject? What immediate problems were they trying to
solve? Which long-range threats and possibilities did they espy on the
horizon, and which future developments did they fail to foresee? What
material and ideological resources did they command, and what
practical constraints did they confront? How and why did their political
opponents take issue with them? Who got to participate in the various
decisions to ordain and, later, amend America’s supreme law?
The Constitution has given rise to a remarkable range of
interpretations over the years. In the chapters that follow I offer my own
take: This book is an opinionated biography of the document. For
example, while I try to say at least something in passing about every
paragraph of the document, I pay special attention to those aspects of
the Constitution that are, in my view, particularly significant or
generally misunderstood. Because readers deserve to be told about other
views, this book’s endnotes identify contrasting perspectives (and also,
where appropriate, furnish additional elaboration). In a brief Postscript,
I summarize the main areas where my method and substance are, for
better or worse, distinctive. For convenience, this book’s Appendix
contains the complete text of the Constitution, keyed to the
corresponding pages of my narrative.
O —where else?—at the beginning, with the Constitution’s
UR STORY BEGINS
opening sentence, conventionally known as the Preamble. This sentence
bids us to ponder basic questions about our Constitution and our
country. How democratic was the Constitution of 1787–88? Did it bind
Americans into an indivisible nation? If so, why?
Chapter 1
I B
N THE EGINNING
THE PENNSYLVANIA PACKET, AND DAILY ADVERTISER (SEPTEMBER 19, 1787).
When, after a summer of closed meetings in Philadelphia, America’s leading statesmen went public with
their proposed Constitution on September 17, 1787, newspapers rushed to print the proposal in its
entirety. In several printings, the dramatic words of the Preamble appeared in particularly large type.
(Illustration Credit 1.1)