Book name- WE THE PEOPLE: A HISTORY OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

Author- Jill Lepore

Published by-John Murray, Price- Rs 1,599

Jill Lepore’s book tells the story of one of the world’s oldest written Constitutions. There may be something paradoxical about writing the history of a document which was adopted in 1787 and ratified three years later by all the states. Indeed, there is a school of thought, known as ‘originalism’, which maintains that the American Constitution’s meaning was fixed at the time of its inception. But Lepore’s view differs from this. She defends the idea that the US Constitution is subjected to time — if only because the structure of the country is markedly different from what it was 250 years ago — and was meant to be amended. In her view, the philosophy of amendment is central to the Constitution. She regrets that the practice has almost disappeared — “... outdated constitutions undermine democratic governance.”

In telling this history, she also tells the story of American political life over the last 250 years: the abolition of slavery, voting rights for women, the attempt in the early 1970s to enshrine the right to a decent environment — these were all the objects of amendments. While the first part of the book goes into some detail over the process which led to the Constitution, the next three parts follow the chronology.

The Constitution itself, as Lepore shows, was the object of intense negotiations — between 1776 and 1787, 13 states wrote no fewer than 20 Constitutions. It was written because the Articles of Confederation, which preceded it, could not be amended (the unanimity of all 13 states was required). It was always meant to be updated and improved — in other words, amended. Article V of the Constitution states that an amendment must be approved by a two-thirds majority in both Houses of the Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states.

Recently, it has been much more difficult to amend the Constitution than initially thought by the framers. So the story told by Lepore is also one of failure of amendment. She has assembled a database of over 11,000 amendments, which were proposed at one time or another (only 27 were ratified). They each tell a story which Lepore conveys vividly. Amendments were ratified at certain moments: the end of the eighteenth century, the end of the Civil War (the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865), the First World War and its aftermath (the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote ratified in 1920). The last significant amendment was ratified in 1971 (lowering the voting age to 18). Constitutional change now must go through the Supreme Court, with the risk of politicisation this implies. The reasons why Article V does not work any longer include political polarisation as well as changes in the population of the country which mean that according to the calculations of the late Supreme Court judge, Antonin Scalia, “... something like less than 2 percent of the population can prevent a constitutional amendment.”

The opening words of the Constitution, “We the people”, did not include the majority of the people — poor White men, Black men, women, indigenous peoples “not taxed” were excluded from “we the people”. Frederick Douglass underlined this movingly in 1857: “We, the people — not we, the white people — not we, the citizens, or the legal voters — not we, the privileged class, and excluding all other classes but we, the people, not we, the horses and cattle, but the people — the men and women, the human inhabitants of the United States, do ordain and establish this Constitution.” And yet they took part in the debates. It is the strength of Lepore’s book to recover their voices and aspirations.

From the 1770s, there were calls to declare slavery unconstitutional. From the 1780s, women sought a place in the political life of the country. There was debate at the Convention over the people of the sovereign native nations. In the early 20th century, the first Indian state (Sequoyah) sought admission to the Union but only Oklahoma granted it, effectively absorbing the Indian territory. Its Constitution, though, integrated the ideas of the proposed Sequoyah Constitution — “... ideas that a century later would reemerge in an environmental legal movement that would seek to grant rights to nature.” In the face of constitutional paralysis and of a scorching earth, Lepore ends on a call to recover the philosophy of amendment.