book of essays explaining the constitution

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History Books » American History

The best books on the us constitution, recommended by jack rakove.

Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence by Jack Rakove

The Pulitzer prize-winning history professor tells us how the Constitution came to be written and ratified and explains why, after more than 200 years, Americans are still so deeply wedded to it.

Interview by Eve Gerber

Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 by Gordon S. Wood

Novus Ordo Seclorum by Forrest McDonald

Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution by Richard Beeman

A Revolution in Favor of Government by Max M Edling

Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 by Pauline Maier

1 Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 by Gordon S. Wood

2 novus ordo seclorum by forrest mcdonald, 3 plain, honest men: the making of the american constitution by richard beeman, 4 a revolution in favor of government by max m edling, 5 ratification: the people debate the constitution, 1787-1788 by pauline maier.

P lease tell us about the document that preceded the Constitution.

Although the United States is a relatively young country, we have the oldest written constitution still in use. What is uniquely enduring about the document?

What’s uniquely enduring about the document is how deeply Americans are wedded to it. When Americans started writing constitutions in the 1770s, doing so was a new idea. The idea of having a written constitution as the original supreme fundamental source of law was an American invention. Now most nations around the world, with a few notable exceptions, have written constitutions.

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But the United States remains uniquely wedded to our Constitution. We’re very reluctant to amend it. The idea of rethinking decisions made in 1787 scares some of us to death. So there’s a curious story: in the 1780s Americans expressed confidence in their ability to devise new institutions of government as a supreme act of political wisdom, but today we are unable to imagine how we could ever improve upon what the framers did.

Why is the history of the framing and ratification so important to everyday Americans?

Americans don’t define citizenship in terms of religion or ethnicity. Instead we define ourselves as a people who believe in the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and in the form of government created by the Constitution. The story of how those documents were written matters a lot to who we are as people.

The American Constitution regulates what our institutions of government can do. It forms our understanding of how the presidency, the Congress , the Supreme Court and the federal courts function in association with state and local governments. A number of legal traditions derived from English and colonial practice still shape our basic ideas of governance. But the Constitution remains the supreme fundamental source of law in the United States.

Would you make clear the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Constitution.

Article III of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to create a judiciary, but the only court the Constitution specifically created was the Supreme Court. For the last two centuries, Americans have argued a great deal about how much authority the Court has over the Constitution. In 1787, I believe, the framers of the Constitution generally assumed that the Court would have the authority to enforce constitutional norms against problematic acts of government. The Supreme Court and the federal courts created by Congress are authorised to measure acts of government against constitutional authority. That’s what we call judicial review.

Now that we’ve done the groundwork, The Creation of the American Republic tells the birth story of the Constitution. Please give us a précis.

I remind my graduate students that Gordon Wood prepared The Creation of the American Republic as his doctoral dissertation, just to scare or, hopefully, inspire them. The fact that so much research and intellectual sophistication went into a PhD thesis is one of the staggering facts of modern intellectual life.

The Creation of the American Republic established that the history of constitutional invention in America did not begin with the convention of 1787. The process of constitutional invention took off in 1776, as Americans were moving to declare independence. As the colonies became states, they had to create governments anew because their old forms of government had significant royal elements to them. So to replace colonial charters they wrote new constitutions, which said specifically what state governments could do and how they would be structured.

Wood shows that there was this rich body of experimentation going on at the level of state government. He then identifies, traces and explains all the changes – some gradual, some significant – that took place in American constitutional thinking between independence and the writing of the federal constitution. In 1786 and 1787, when it became evident that the nation needed a new federal constitution, the experience of the states provided a real source of information, arguments, experience and inspiration that the framers in Philadelphia drew on quite deeply.

What was the biggest open question left by the final draft of the Constitution?

I think the nature of the presidency was the biggest issue. There was no real model at that time, anywhere in the world, of a republican presidency. Americans were rejecting monarchy and what we now call ministerial government, meaning the cabinet form of government that was evolving in Britain. They wanted to have a president who was constitutionally independent of the legislature, but not so powerful as to be a potential despot. They didn’t know what kind of influence and authority the president would be able to acquire or need to exercise. They had no satisfactory ideas as to how the president was going to be elected, so they settled on the electoral college system. So I think the single largest issue that the framers left open was the question: “What will be the nature of executive power in a national republic?” Since then, American politics has been, in many respects, the story of the construction of presidential power.

Were there bills of rights in state constitutions?

Let’s move on to Novus Ordo Seclorum . Forrest McDonald paints a different picture of the intellectual ferment that surrounded the framing. Tell us about it.

McDonald’s book traces the different sources of intellectual influence that worked on the framers in Philadelphia. He has great background chapters where he describes dominant modes of thinking in the 18th century. He’s got a great chapter, for example, on the nature of law. He has other discussions of how people thought about political economy , meaning the role of the state in managing economic affairs. So he creates a deep intellectual background for the world that the framers inhabited. Then he assesses which authors exerted influence on particular framers. I’m not persuaded that McDonald’s method of mapping intellectual influences works as well as he thinks it does. For example, there is enormous debate about the extent of David Hume’s influence on James Madison. Scholars have been arguing about it for 70 years, but McDonald is an avowed Hamiltonian and finds it hard to take Madison too seriously.

Can we safely generalise about how Enlightenment political theory informed the framing?

Now lets talk about a 55-person portrait of the men who made the Constitution: Plain, Honest Men

by Richard Beeman.

We know a lot about the federal convention because Madison assigned himself the task of taking daily notes about what was said. And we know a fair amount about many or most of the authors of the Constitution. So we can reconstruct a narrative about how the Constitution was framed day by day, issue by issue. Rick Beeman does that very successfully.

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Framing a constitution through this kind of convention was a great novelty. Most of the state constitutions, which had been done a decade earlier, were written quickly by delegates who had other duties to perform. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention came to Philadelphia from 12 of the 13 original states and sat together, sealed up in Independence Hall, from May through September. Some of the delegates spoke very little, about 15 were active speakers, others sat back and absorbed or seemed terribly bored. They came in good moods and bad. Some ate too much for lunch and napped in the afternoon. It got pretty hot in the hall. Reconstructing what it was like, week by week, to draft a new federal plan makes a great story.

It seems that two centuries ago the framers were unable to resolve contentious issues that are still being litigated today – disagreements over guns, freedom of speech, separation of church and state. What is the Constitution’s legacy on those issues?

Next, A Revolution in Favor of Government revises our understanding of the Constitution. How?

Max Edling, a young Swedish scholar, who has just finished a sabbatical at Stanford this year, did this book originally as a doctoral dissertation in England. For a foreign scholar to write a thesis that significantly shifts how established scholars think about the American Constitution is quite a feat.

Max Edling restores the Hamiltonian part of the framing story. Most scholars, myself included, have privileged James Madison, who was most concerned about the protection of rights and the proper structure of constitutional government. Edling explains that Alexander Hamilton and a group of other men who had served in the Continental Army, were concerned by the weakness that the American government demonstrated during the revolutionary war and were deeply aware that Great Britain, our former colonial master, was advantaged by having the most efficient state in the Atlantic world. Their view of the dangers that the United States would face as a new republic shaped the framing.

Gordon Wood wrote of this book: “It helps us better understand the constitutional sources of the gigantic fiscal-military state that the United States has become.” What does Wood mean?

Pauline Maier picks up the story of the Constitution from the time of its framing with Ratification . Please tell us about it.

The story of how the Constitution was ratified is just as remarkable as the story of how it was framed. By the end of 10 months of public debate, each of the 11 states that originally ratified the Constitution had independently adopted it. States could recommend amendments, but the only binding action they could take was to vote the entire Constitution up or down. Comparing that process to what Europeans have been going through over the last decade with the EU constitutional treaty makes you think the framers were geniuses. They came up with a remarkably efficient way to get the Constitution adopted. It required a lot of debate and a lot of political manoeuvring but it was ratified in less than a year.

Until Pauline Maier published this book, that story has never been well told. There have been examinations of particular state debates. There was one older narrative, which was adequate. But no one has looked at ratification as comprehensively. Recently, the Historical Society of Wisconsin compiled some 20 volumes of ratification debate records. Maier uses those records cohesively and effectively. She tells a great story.

How did the Federalists win the day?

They won the day in various ways. Under the Articles of Confederation you needed all 13 states to approve amendments. The framers of the Constitution said, “We’re only going to require the approval of nine states to replace the Articles.” Since state legislatures might lose power under the new Constitution, the ratification went through constitutional conventions rather than legislatures. It was a gimmick that worked.

Ratification got off to a good start. The Federalists got six states to ratify within the first few months of debate. They made one big mistake in Pennsylvania, which was the second most populous state at the time. The Pennsylvania convention was divided into two parties: two-thirds of the members were Federalists who supported ratification; another third were anti-Federalists who opposed it. The Federalist majority rode roughshod over the anti-Federalist minority. That played poorly in the press – it looked as if the Federalists were being overly manipulative and insufficiently democratic. Criticism of what took place in Pennsylvania helped make the overall process of ratification elsewhere fairer.

Furthermore, Federalists didn’t control all the press but they did dominate it. They got George Washington and Benjamin Franklin on their side. They capitalised on the prevailing sense that the Articles of Confederation, which came into effect towards the end of the Revolutionary War, were riddled with problems. Whatever controversy there might be about particular provisions of the federal constitution, it seemed more promising than the Articles.

Maier walks us through the debates, one by one, so we understand how the politics of ratification played out within individual states. If you read Maier, you get to see the complexities of what happens when citizens are given the opportunity to discuss their national constitution.

In the two centuries since ratification, the Constitution has often been interpreted in light of the ratification debate records. Do you think that’s historically sound?

Most historians are very sceptical about the way that the Supreme Court is doing this. To reason accurately about the past is much trickier than one might think. The current version of originalism is what’s called “public meaning originalism”. It says we don’t really care about the history of how these provisions got adopted, we’re not going to try to reconstruct the debates to figure out what the framers wanted and what the ratifiers thought. We just want to get at the holistic meaning of the language. To historians this is a terribly flawed enterprise, but that’s the current regime.

Can you explain why that enterprise is so wrongheaded?

Language is dynamic. As the work of many historians, including my own work, attests, the 18th century was a period of political experimentation. The framers were rethinking the nature of representative government, they were rethinking the nature of executive power, they were coming up with new rules for judges. All this required a terrific amount of creative political thinking. The idea that language was fixed when all these ideas were being stretched and pressed in different directions, the idea that the meaning of a text is frozen at the moment of its adoption, it just strikes most historians as inane.

What can we learn about interpreting the Constitution by reading your Pulitzer-winning history of the framing, Original Meanings ?

The best way to reconstruct the original meaning of documents that we still interpret today is to come up with a method of analysis that looks very carefully at different sources and how much those sources are worth. The framing debates involved a relatively small group of men deliberating on a day-to-day basis. Once the Constitution was published, anybody could say anything about it. The ratification debate was just as wide open as our own political debate, quite different from the closed-door debates that occurred within Independence Hall as recorded by James Madison.

In my book I spend a lot of time distinguishing the original intentions of the framers from the original understandings of the ratifiers. I try to explain why any intelligent analysis of the Constitution’s original meaning would have to look at both and think critically about each form of evidence. I try to give the historian’s answer to the lawyer’s question.

You’ve said that historians should call the bluff of people who twist the history of the Constitution for instrumental purposes. Please call someone’s bluff.

I submitted a brief in the District of Columbia vs Heller case, from three years ago. That was the case in which the Court struck down a 32-year-old handgun ban as incompatible with the Second Amendment. I think there are intellectual embarrassments of the first order in Justice Scalia’s opinion. He wholly ignores the history of how the Second Amendment got adopted. He makes things up that did not happen the way he hypothesises. But I’m a historian and he’s a justice . I’m a private citizen and he’s a public official. I think I have better footnotes, but he has a vote on the Supreme Court.

November 5, 2012

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Jack Rakove

Jack Rakove teaches history and political science at Stanford University. He is the author of six books on early American history. He won a Pulitzer prize in 1997 for his book Original Meanings

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The Retired Justice Who Doesn’t Understand the Supreme Court

Stephen Breyer means well. Why is his new book, “Reading the Constitution,” so exasperating?

By Jennifer Szalai

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READING THE CONSTITUTION: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, by Stephen Breyer

Justice Stephen Breyer is worried about the Supreme Court — or at least I think he is, based on what I could glean from the faint notes of concern he tucks into his new book, “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism.”

Breyer, who retired from the court in 2022, is known as a moderate liberal and a stalwart institutionalist. In his previous book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics” (2021) , he insisted that critics had failed to recognize the justices’ unflagging commitment to upholding apolitical ideals. Nine months after it was published, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc, by a vote of 6-3 , upended longstanding precedent on abortion rights. The majority opinion declared Roe v. Wade “ overruled ”; Breyer signed on to the minority’s blistering dissent.

Given that Breyer is no longer a sitting judge, one might have thought that this new book would afford him the opportunity to let loose, and in interviews he has suggested he is sounding an alarm. But his voice in the book barely rises above a whisper. Written in Breyer’s careful, tentative style, “Reading the Constitution” is well meaning, tedious and exasperating; it is also rather telling, showing how a thoughtful, conscientious jurist can get so wedded to propriety and high-mindedness that he comes across as earnestly naïve.

Breyer explains that he wrote the book to counter the rise of “textualism,” a form of judicial interpretation that fixates on the text of the Constitution and often shades into “originalism” — which restricts interpretation even further to how the text would have been understood at the time it was originally written. Instead of textualism, he prefers a “traditionalist” or “pragmatic” approach that takes not just text but also “purpose” into account. He argues that judges who try to strip away any extra-textual considerations, like evolving values and legislative history, “diminish the effectiveness and vibrancy of their interpretive palette.”

Most of the book is given over to parsing cases in granular detail, explaining exactly how looking beyond the text has historically yielded opinions that are “sound” — a word he calls one of the best compliments that you can give a judge. He front loads his examples with those he describes as “intellectually difficult.” Only after wading through “highly technical” cases having to do with things like patent infringement and retirement plans for railroad workers will a reader be prepared, he says, to take on anything as “value-laden” as reproductive rights.

This may have seemed to Breyer like a sound structure for his book, but it turns out to be a rhetorical sinkhole. Subjecting your readers to a forced march through complex arcana, telling them the “repetition” is for their own good, is more likely to exhaust them than prepare them. Despite my (admittedly freakish) tolerance for exegesis, I felt so worn down by the bland recitation of case history that I found myself nearly sapped of the will to go on.

Of course, it is Breyer’s patience for sifting through the most finicky details that made him such a scrupulous jurist. He is dedicated, precise and deliberate. He shows just how far he is willing to drill down into every element of a case in order to arrive at a decision. Life, he points out, is too full of ambiguity and change for “static” readings of statutes to make any sense; a jurisprudence that takes heed of “the Constitution’s democratic, humane values” is “both normatively desirable and practically useful.”

But in a book intended not only for legal professionals, combing through case details will only tell you so much. Breyer says he dislikes textualism because it is too limiting and too rigid; originalism, he explains, “does not take into account the ways in which our values as a society evolve over time as we learn from the mistakes of our past.” He writes as if offering a blizzard of detail to that effect will eventually clinch his argument. It also allows him to pretend that the crucial difference between the justices’ judicial approaches is primarily technical, a matter of “interpretive tools.”

“To place determinative weight on the way in which 18th-century speakers used particular words,” Breyer says, “is regressive.” He’s right — and perhaps that’s why the conservative justices like originalism so much. For anyone who believes that progress has gotten out of hand, “regressive” is arguably a point in originalism’s favor. “My examples show why a judge should often emphasize purposes,” he writes, as if he’s identifying something that has been overlooked or rejected. Isn’t it possible that his conservative colleagues also emphasize purposes, albeit very different ones?

Originalists deny that purposes matter to them, since purpose, as the originalist justice Antonin Scalia once put it, fails to provide an “objective basis for judging”; they like to say that they’re simply sticking closely to the text, and Breyer is palpably eager to take their stated intentions at face value, even when textualism can also function quite nicely as ideological cover . He keeps repeating the argument that “purpose-related tools” can make “our democracy more workable .” The word “workable” is used so many times in the book that it becomes a poignant refrain — that of an optimistic, pragmatic liberal jurist who wants to believe that if only he is clear enough, he can get his fellow justices to recognize that they are ultimately committed to the same thing.

Does Breyer, who is so attuned to the irreducible complexity of the world outside the Supreme Court, truly believe that the world inside is so simple? Given his decades of experience, I find it hard to imagine he does — but then he still seems flummoxed by the Supreme Court’s right-wing turn. At his most baffled, he starts firing off strings of rhetorical questions, asking plaintively how anyone could ever want “a world in which no governmental effort is made to cure environmental, medical or safety-related ills?”

In an interview with Adam Liptak of The Times last week, a beseeching Breyer sounded similarly perplexed. After all, he said, the decision to override Roe was bound to have cruel consequences: “Are they really going to allow women to die on the table because they won’t allow an abortion which would save her life? I mean, really, no one would do that. And they wouldn’t do that.”

There is a profound and generous kindness embedded in his remarks, a determination to think the best of people, but his incredulity makes you wonder what alternate universe Breyer is living in. When it comes to denying a woman the right to a life-saving abortion, not only are there “really” some people who “would do that”; there are six people in black robes who effectively did .

READING THE CONSTITUTION : Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism | By Stephen Breyer | Simon & Schuster | 335 pp. | $32

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

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The Everything U.S. Constitution Book: An easy-to-understand explanation of the foundation of American government Paperback – June 18, 2011

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• How the articles and amendments were drafted
• Insight into the intentions of the creators and the sources they used
• Controversial interpretations and Supreme Court decisions
• How the Constitution affects citizens every day
• The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and unratified Constitutional amendments This book walks you through the history of this essential document and shows how it has guided lawmakers and judges for more than 200 years. This unbiased look at the Constitution will help you feel confident in your knowledge of this all-important document, gain a firmer understanding of how our government works, and put context around today's most pressing issues.
• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Everything
• Publication date June 18, 2011
• Dimensions 8.25 x 0.2 x 11 inches
• ISBN-10 1440512744
• ISBN-13 978-1440512742
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From the author, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Everything (June 18, 2011)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1440512744
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1440512742
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.21 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.25 x 0.2 x 11 inches
• #797 in Constitutions (Books)
• #3,427 in U.S. Revolution & Founding History
• #6,857 in U.S. Political Science

About the author

Ellen m. kozak.

Ellen M. Kozak practices copyright, publishing, and media law in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is the author of nine books (some of them novels published under a pseudonym) and hundreds of articles that have appeared in publications as diverse as "USA Today," the "Wall Street Journal," "Campaigns & Elections," "Travel+Leisure," "Milwaukee Magazine," the "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel," "Toastmaster," and the "Fresno Bee," as well as radio essays for WUWM radio.

Ms. Kozak is a frequent speaker on legal topics and on publishing and copyright law to groups around the country. She is a graduate of Barnard College and the University of Wisconsin Law School, and holds a Certificate in Law of the Media from the NYU School of Law.

Her book "From Pen to Print: The Secrets of Getting Published Successfully" was named best Wisconsin nonfiction book of 1990 by the Council for Wisconsin Writers.

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Constitution

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

The Constitution of the United States established America’s national government and fundamental laws, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. 

It was signed on September 17, 1787, by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Under America’s first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, the national government was weak and states operated like independent countries. At the 1787 convention, delegates devised a plan for a stronger federal government with three branches—executive, legislative and judicial—along with a system of checks and balances to ensure no single branch would have too much power. 

The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution

The Preamble outlines the Constitution's purpose and guiding principles. It reads:

The Bill of Rights were 10 amendments guaranteeing basic individual protections, such as freedom of speech and religion, that became part of the Constitution in 1791. To date, there are 27 constitutional amendments.

Articles of Confederation

America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation , was ratified in 1781, a time when the nation was a loose confederation of states, each operating like independent countries. The national government was comprised of a single legislature, the Congress of the Confederation; there was no president or judicial branch.

The Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war and regulate currency; however, in reality these powers were sharply limited because Congress had no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops.

Did you know? George Washington was initially reluctant to attend the Constitutional Convention. Although he saw the need for a stronger national government, he was busy managing his estate at Mount Vernon, suffering from rheumatism and worried that the convention wouldn't be successful in achieving its goals.

Soon after America won its independence from Great Britain with its 1783 victory in the American Revolution , it became increasingly evident that the young republic needed a stronger central government in order to remain stable.

In 1786, Alexander Hamilton , a lawyer and politician from New York , called for a constitutional convention to discuss the matter. The Confederation Congress, which in February 1787 endorsed the idea, invited all 13 states to send delegates to a meeting in Philadelphia.

Forming a More Perfect Union

On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence had been adopted 11 years earlier. There were 55 delegates in attendance, representing all 13 states except Rhode Island , which refused to send representatives because it did not want a powerful central government interfering in its economic business. George Washington , who’d become a national hero after leading the Continental Army to victory during the American Revolution, was selected as president of the convention by unanimous vote.

The delegates (who also became known as the “framers” of the Constitution) were a well-educated group that included merchants, farmers, bankers and lawyers. Many had served in the Continental Army, colonial legislatures or the Continental Congress (known as the Congress of the Confederation as of 1781). In terms of religious affiliation, most were Protestants. Eight delegates were signers of the Declaration of Independence, while six had signed the Articles of Confederation.

At age 81, Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was the oldest delegate, while the majority of the delegates were in their 30s and 40s. Political leaders not in attendance at the convention included Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and John Adams (1735-1826), who were serving as U.S. ambassadors in Europe. John Jay (1745-1829), Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and John Hancock (1737-93) were also absent from the convention. Virginia’s Patrick Henry (1736-99) was chosen to be a delegate but refused to attend the convention because he didn’t want to give the central government more power, fearing it would endanger the rights of states and individuals.

Reporters and other visitors were barred from the convention sessions, which were held in secret to avoid outside pressures. However, Virginia’s James Madison (1751-1836) kept a detailed account of what transpired behind closed doors. (In 1837, Madison’s widow Dolley sold some of his papers, including his notes from the convention debates, to the federal government for $30,000.)

Debating the Constitution

The delegates had been tasked by Congress with amending the Articles of Confederation; however, they soon began deliberating proposals for an entirely new form of government. After intensive debate, which continued throughout the summer of 1787 and at times threatened to derail the proceedings, they developed a plan that established three branches of national government–executive, legislative and judicial. A system of checks and balances was put into place so that no single branch would have too much authority. The specific powers and responsibilities of each branch were also laid out.

Among the more contentious issues was the question of state representation in the national legislature. Delegates from larger states wanted population to determine how many representatives a state could send to Congress, while small states called for equal representation. The issue was resolved by the Connecticut Compromise, which proposed a bicameral legislature with proportional representation of the states in the lower house ( House of Representatives ) and equal representation in the upper house (Senate).

Another controversial topic was slavery. Although some northern states had already started to outlaw the practice, they went along with the southern states’ insistence that slavery was an issue for individual states to decide and should be kept out of the Constitution. Many northern delegates believed that without agreeing to this, the South wouldn’t join the Union. For the purposes of taxation and determining how many representatives a state could send to Congress, it was decided that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person. Additionally, it was agreed that Congress wouldn’t be allowed to prohibit the slave trade before 1808, and states were required to return fugitive enslaved people to their owners.

Ratifying the Constitution

By September 1787, the convention’s five-member Committee of Style (Hamilton, Madison, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, Gouverneur Morris of New York, Rufus King of Massachusetts ) had drafted the final text of the Constitution, which consisted of some 4,200 words. On September 17, George Washington was the first to sign the document. Of the 55 delegates, a total of 39 signed; some had already left Philadelphia, and three–George Mason (1725-92) and Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) of Virginia , and Elbridge Gerry (1744-1813) of Massachusetts–refused to approve the document. In order for the Constitution to become law, it then had to be ratified by nine of the 13 states.

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, with assistance from John Jay, wrote a series of essays to persuade people to ratify the Constitution. The 85 essays, known collectively as “The Federalist” (or “The Federalist Papers”), detailed how the new government would work, and were published under the pseudonym Publius (Latin for “public”) in newspapers across the states starting in the fall of 1787. (People who supported the Constitution became known as Federalists, while those opposed it because they thought it gave too much power to the national government were called Anti-Federalists.)

Beginning on December 7, 1787, five states– Delaware , Pennsylvania, New Jersey , Georgia and Connecticut–ratified the Constitution in quick succession. However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document, as it failed to reserve un-delegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion and the press. 

In February 1788, a compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states would agree to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would be immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina . On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, and it was subsequently agreed that government under the U.S. Constitution would begin on March 4, 1789. George Washington was inaugurated as America’s first president on April 30, 1789. In June of that same year, Virginia ratified the Constitution, and New York followed in July. On February 2, 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court held its first session, marking the date when the government was fully operative.

Rhode Island, the last holdout of the original 13 states, finally ratified the Constitution on May 29, 1790.

The Bill of Rights

In 1789, Madison, then a member of the newly established U.S. House of Representatives , introduced 19 amendments to the Constitution. On September 25, 1789, Congress adopted 12 of the amendments and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of these amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights , were ratified and became part of the Constitution on December 10, 1791. The Bill of Rights guarantees individuals certain basic protections as citizens, including freedom of speech, religion and the press; the right to bear and keep arms; the right to peaceably assemble; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; and the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. For his contributions to the drafting of the Constitution, as well as its ratification, Madison became known as “Father of the Constitution.”

To date, there have been thousands of proposed amendments to the Constitution. However, only 17 amendments have been ratified in addition to the Bill of Rights because the process isn’t easy–after a proposed amendment makes it through Congress, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. The most recent amendment to the Constitution, Article XXVII, which deals with congressional pay raises, was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992.

The Constitution Today

In the more than 200 years since the Constitution was created, America has stretched across an entire continent and its population and economy have expanded more than the document’s framers likely ever could have envisioned. Through all the changes, the Constitution has endured and adapted.

The framers knew it wasn’t a perfect document. However, as Benjamin Franklin said on the closing day of the convention in 1787: “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a central government is necessary for us… I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.” Today, the original Constitution is on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Constitution Day is observed on September 17, to commemorate the date the document was signed.

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5 Good Books about the U.S. Constitution

• January 18, 2021

How well do you know America’s founding document?

The Constitution may have been written more than two centuries ago, but its contents are urgently relevant today. If you’ve never read this foundational text — or are murky on its origins — explore the titles below. Understanding how America got started is key to ensuring we keep going.

American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution by Garrett Epps (Oxford University Press). Taking the Constitution on its own terms, the author leads a fascinating literary exploration of the 7,500 words of the document itself.

The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution by David O. Stewart (Simon & Schuster). This book offers a compelling narrative about the brilliant though sometimes angry and scheming personalities who produced the world’s first written charter for a republic.

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (multiple editions). First published in newspapers as advocacy pieces, the collective wisdom of these 85 essays on the new American government has never been surpassed.

Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 by Pauline Maier (Simon & Schuster). Once the Constitution was written, the states still had to ratify it, and the process proved to be difficult, dramatic, and enlightening.

James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights by Richard Labunski (Oxford University Press). The Framers of the Constitution neglected to include most protections for individual rights, so Madison and the First Congress undertook that essential effort in 1789. 

[Editor’s note: This piece first ran in 2014, but we wanted to share it again now. See “urgently relevant,” above.]

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America's Founding Documents

The Constitution: How Did it Happen?

Concern about the articles of confederation.

Just a few years after the Revolutionary War, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington feared their young country was on the brink of collapse. America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, gave the Confederation Congress the power to make rules and request funds from the states, but it had no enforcement powers, couldn’t regulate commerce, or print money. The states’ disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the young country apart. Alexander Hamilton helped convince Congress to organize a Grand Convention of state delegates to work on revising the Articles of Confederation.

Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention, 1856

Oil on canvas by Junius Brutus Steams. Courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Constitutional Convention

The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in May of 1787. The delegates shuttered the windows of the State House and swore secrecy so they could speak freely. Although they had gathered to revise the Articles of Confederation, by mid-June they had decided to completely redesign the government. There was little agreement about what form it would take.

One of the fiercest arguments was over congressional representation—should it be based on population or divided equally among the states? The framers compromised by giving each state one representative for every 30,000 people in the House of Representatives and two representatives in the Senate. They agreed to count enslaved Africans as three-fifths of a person. Slavery itself was a thorny question that threatened to derail the Union. It was temporarily resolved when the delegates agreed that the slave trade could continue until 1808.

Writing the Constitution

After three hot summer months of equally heated debate, the delegates appointed a Committee of Detail to put its decisions in writing. Near the end of the convention, a Committee of Style and Arrangement kneaded it into its final form, condensing 23 articles into seven in less than four days.

On September 17, 1787, 38 delegates signed the Constitution. George Reed signed for John Dickinson of Delaware, who was absent, bringing the total number of signatures to 39. It was an extraordinary achievement. Tasked with revising the existing government, the delegates came up with a completely new one. Wary about centralized power and loyal to their states, they created a powerful central government. Representing wildly different interests and views, they crafted compromises. It stands today as one of the longest-lived and most emulated constitutions in the world.

Ratification

The founders set the terms for ratifying the Constitution. They bypassed the state legislatures, reasoning that their members would be reluctant to give up power to a national government. Instead, they called for special ratifying conventions in each state. Ratification by 9 of the 13 states enacted the new government. But at the time, only 6 of 13 states reported a pro-Constitution majority.

The Federalists, who believed that a strong central government was necessary to face the nation’s challenges, needed to convert at least three states. The Anti-Federalists fought hard against the Constitution because it created a powerful central government that reminded them of the one they had just overthrown, and it lacked a bill of rights.

The ratification campaign was a nail-biter. The tide turned in Massachusetts, where the “vote now, amend later” compromise helped secure victory in that state and eventually in the final holdouts.

What Does it Say? How Was it Made?

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Course: US history   >   Unit 3

• The Articles of Confederation
• What was the Articles of Confederation?
• Shays's Rebellion
• The Constitutional Convention
• The US Constitution

The Federalist Papers

• The Bill of Rights
• Social consequences of revolutionary ideals
• The presidency of George Washington
• Why was George Washington the first president?
• The presidency of John Adams
• Regional attitudes about slavery, 1754-1800
• Continuity and change in American society, 1754-1800
• Creating a nation
• The Federalist Papers was a collection of essays written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton in 1788.
• The essays urged the ratification of the United States Constitution, which had been debated and drafted at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
• The Federalist Papers is considered one of the most significant American contributions to the field of political philosophy and theory and is still widely considered to be the most authoritative source for determining the original intent of the framers of the US Constitution.

The Articles of Confederation and Constitutional Convention

• In Federalist No. 10 , Madison reflects on how to prevent rule by majority faction and advocates the expansion of the United States into a large, commercial republic.
• In Federalist No. 39 and Federalist 51 , Madison seeks to “lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty,” emphasizing the need for checks and balances through the separation of powers into three branches of the federal government and the division of powers between the federal government and the states. 4 ‍  
• In Federalist No. 84 , Hamilton advances the case against the Bill of Rights, expressing the fear that explicitly enumerated rights could too easily be construed as comprising the only rights to which American citizens were entitled.

What do you think?

• For more on Shays’s Rebellion, see Leonard L. Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
• Bernard Bailyn, ed. The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Anti-Federalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification; Part One, September 1787 – February 1788 (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
• See Federalist No. 1 .
• See Federalist No. 51 .
• For more, see Michael Meyerson, Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World (New York: Basic Books, 2008).

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• Georgetown Law Library

Constitutional Law and History Research Guide

• Historical Documents & Resources
• Introduction/Key Resources
• Primary Law
• Treatises and Other Secondary Sources
• State Constitutional Law

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Introduction

The events and discussions leading to the adoption of the Constitution and its amendments are recorded in a variety of reports, journals, and other documents. These materials continue to be important resources as courts attempt to apply the terms of an 18th century document to evolving modern circumstances. The following proceedings and documents can provide valuable historical background on the U.S. Constitution.

There is no official record of the proceedings regarding the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  James Madison kept the journal of the proceedings, but it included only procedural information. Several editions of this journal are available online and in print at the library: 

• The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787: Which framed the Constitution of the United States of America / reported by James Madison (1920 ed.)

A more modern source to consult is Max Farrand's  T he Records of the Federal Constitution of 1787 .  Farrand's  Records  remains the single best source for discussions of the Constitutional Convention as it gathers together the documentary records of the Constitutional Convention and the materials necessary to study the workings of the Constitutional Convention. Published in 1911, the documentary records of the Constitutional Convention were compiled into three volumes containing the notes by major participants and the texts of various alternative plans presented. The three volumes also includes notes and letters by many other participants, as well as the various constitutional plans proposed during the convention. 

Full text access to the 1911 edition is available online at the following sources:

• HeinOnline's World Constitutions Illustrated
• A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875

Subsequent editions:

• The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (rev. 1937) In 1937, Farrand published a revised edition, which included a fourth volume.
• The Records of the Federal convention of 1787 (rev. 1987) In 1987, a supplement to Farrand's Records was compiled and edited by James Hutson.

For more on the Anti-Federalists, who made the case  against  ratification, as well as debates on the ratification of the Constitution, see:

• The Complete Anti-Federalist by Herbert J. Storing The most comprehensive collection of Anti-Federalist writings.
• Birth of the Bill of Rights : Encyclopedia of the Antifederalists by Jon L. Wakelyn Includes biographies of 140 prominent Anti-Federalists, as well as major speeches and writings arranged by state.
• Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787 by Jonathan Elliot A five-volume collection compiled by Jonathan Elliot remains the best source for materials about the national government's transitional period between the closing of the Constitutional Convention in September 1787 and the opening of the First Federal Congress in March 1789
• The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (UVA Press, Digital Edition) This work is generally considered more accurate and authoritative than Elliot's Debates. This landmark work in historical and legal scholarship draws upon thousands of sources to trace the Constitution’s progress through each of the thirteen states’ conventions. The digital edition allows users to search the complete contents by date, title, author, recipient, or state affiliation and preserves the copious annotations of the print edition.

The Federalist Papers (also known as "The Federalist") were a series of eighty-five essays urging the citizens of New York to ratify the new United States Constitution written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.The Federalist Papers are considered one of the most important sources for interpreting and understanding the original intent of the Constitution.

These arguments made for ratification of the Constitution were published in collected form as  The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution  (1788) , which is available from the following sources:

• The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution (HeinOnline) Essays written during the early development of American Constitutional History. Includes "The Federalist" and other essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Also available in print.
• The Federalist and Other Constitutional Papers In addition to The Federalist, this book includes information on other essays and discussions from between the time when the work of the Federal Convention was announced and the time when the Constitution was adopted by the States.
• The Federalist Papers (Yale's Avalon Project) The Avalon Project provides primary source materials relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government.
• The Federalist Papers (Library of Congress) The original text of the Federalist Papers obtained from the e-text archives of Project Gutenberg.

The Amendments Project

• The Amendments Project The Amendments Project (TAP) is a searchable archive of the full text of nearly every amendment to the U.S. Constitution proposed in Congress between 1789 and 2022 (more than 11,000 proposals).Only twenty-seven amendments to the U.S. Constitution have ever been ratified; the Amendments Project is, then, an archive of failures.

Since ratification in 1788, thousands of amendments have been proposed, though the Constitution has been amended only twenty-seven times. As outlined in Article V, amendments to the Constitution are proposed by Congress and presented to the states for ratification. These amendments are discussed in length in the following sources:

• Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues, 1789-2010 by John R. Vile Provides a comprehensive analysis of the United States' constitutional amendments. With over 400 short articles, this encyclopedia tells the whole story of constitutional amendments: the rigorous ratification process, the significance of the 27 amendments, and the thousands that didn't pass.
• The Founders' Constitution by Philip B. Kurland & Ralph Lerner Covers the first twelve amendments as well as the original seven articles.
• The Complete Bill of Rights : the Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins by Neil H. Cogan Provides excerpts from source documents arranged by amendment as well as texts of proposals in Congress and from the state conventions, and discussion of the amendments in Congress, conventions, newspapers and letters.
• The Reconstruction Amendments' Debates : the Legislative History and Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments by Alfred Avins The Reconstruction amendments such as the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses were proposed by Congress and the deliberations of the House and Senate debates for these amendments were reprinted in this source. It also contains guide explaining the context of each document.
• Constitutional Amendments, 1789 to the Present by Kris E. Palmer Addresses each amendment in order with a length article on the original context and subsequent interpretation.
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• Next: Primary Law >>
• © Georgetown University Law Library. These guides may be used for educational purposes, as long as proper credit is given. These guides may not be sold. Any comments, suggestions, or requests to republish or adapt a guide should be submitted using the Research Guides Comments form . Proper credit includes the statement: Written by, or adapted from, Georgetown Law Library (current as of .....).
• Last Updated: Mar 22, 2024 10:26 AM
• URL: https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/constitutionallaw

SUMMARY Of Reading The Constitution (A Guide To Stephen Breyer's Book‪)‬

Why i chose pragmatism, not textualism, publisher description.

DISCLAIMER! This is an independent publication by Gary V. Norris that summarizes Stephen Breyer's Book in detail. The content provided in this summary book is based solely on the information available at the time of writing. While the author strives for accuracy and takes utmost care in summarizing the original material, he does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information contained herein. It is essential to cross-reference the information provided with the original work or consult additional sources before making any decisions based on the content of this summary book. The information presented in this summary book is intended to provide an overview and understanding of the original work, but it should not replace actual reading or engagement with the complete source material. Interpretation of any ideas, concepts, or theories from this summary book is subjective and should be considered solely as the opinion of the summarizer. The content in this summary book should not be considered professional advice, such as legal, financial, medical, or psychological advice. Any actions taken based on the information provided in this summary book are at your own risk. Always seek appropriate professional advice or consult licensed experts in the relevant fields for specific concerns or inquiries. In no event shall the summarizer, contributors, or distributors of this summary book be held liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of the use or inability to use the content contained herein. The author shall not be responsible for any loss, damage, injury, or inconvenience caused by reliance on the information provided in this summary book. HAPPY READING!!!

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