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

Control of the U.S. Constitution as a “living” and inevitably changing text has passed from the hands of the people to those of elites, argues bestselling historian Lepore (These Truths) in this stylish and clear-eyed study. For the nation’s first 150 years, the process of amendment was the main path, she contends, by which the Constitution was reinterpreted. These changes would often come after periods of massive upheaval—12 amendments were passed after the Revolutionary War, three after the Civil War, seven after WWI—or following intense, sustained activism, like the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. From FDR’s administration onward, however, politicians “abandoned constitutional amendment” in favor of “applying pressure on the Supreme Court”; as a result, Lepore asserts, the Constitution is still “changing all the time” via judicial decisions that are influenced by a select few elites in government and industry. Lepore’s narrative tracks various amendments and state constitutions formed in the 19th and early 20th centuries in order to excavate how this shift happened, from the dispiriting failure of the Reconstruction amendments to the surprisingly outsized influence of a constitution formed by Native Americans in Oklahoma. Today, she writes, after the spectacular, prolonged failures of “lost amendments” like the ERA, amendment itself has come to be seen as a boondoggle. Citing mounting threats like climate change and authoritarianism, Lepore urges the public and legislators to seriously take up the cause of amendment once again. It’s a galvanizing and paradigm-shifting take on America’s slow descent into plutocracy. (Sept.)