The Constitution

This month, we celebrated July Fourth – a day when, amid cookouts and fireworks, we commemorate our nation’s birth. Independence Day is a time to reflect on America’s fundamental values. That’s why this edition examines the very document that enshrines our country’s ideals: The Constitution.

Our founders understood that self-governance requires an independent press to allow citizens to engage in free debate and hold government accountable.

When I set out to do a podcast about the Constitution, I struggled at first to figure out how to bring such a complex document into an accessible audio form – one that would animate people across age groups and backgrounds to engage with the laws and governing principles that shape their lives in this country.

Six decades after Lyndon B. Johnson observed, “A man without a vote is a man without protection,” the Supreme Court ruled that the right to vote is more “use it or lose it.” Now, Ohioans can be purged from the rolls for simply not voting and responding to a mailer in a prescribed amount of time.

At its outset, the Constitution was valued more as a tool than an object for citizens. Occasionally the “Federalist Papers” strike a tone of near apology; they defend the Constitution as necessary if undesirable in some regards.

The most perennially embattled right was hailed by Justice Holmes as most imperative: “Freedom for the thought that we hate,” including hateful ideas.

We have amended our Constitution 27 times in 230 years. Taken together, these amendments have expanded democracy, safeguarded rights and improved governance – incrementally making an imperfect Constitution better.

The fundamental purpose of our Constitution is to discipline the government – and “We the People.” Thus, as its principal author, James Madison, wrote, federal powers were to be “few and defined.”

As we celebrate America’s independence, we’re reminded that the right to vote in enshrined repeatedly in our Constitution. Throughout history, some of our greatest strides have come when this right was reaffirmed and expanded. When voting obstacles are knocked down, our country grows freer, fairer, and more just.

The broadest consequential public misunderstanding about the U.S. Constitution resembles common misunderstandings about nearly all historical phenomena: context. Everything has a history. Nothing can be properly understood, especially from a policy perspective, without an understanding of the historical (and sometimes geographical) context within which it occurred.

Our constitution provides that “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It is a principle that traces its origins back 800 years to the English Magna Carta. As our Supreme Court has recognized many times, “no person” means citizen and noncitizen alike.

The Constitution is radically defective. The defects are the “hard-wired” structures within which we conduct our politics and confront – or, in fact, fail to confront – the great challenges facing our country. Think only of the grotesque misallocation of voting power in the Senate or the Electoral College.

Using civil forfeiture, law enforcement can permanently confiscate cash, cars, even homes, without ever charging the owner. It’s a power more fitting of a banana republic, not a constitutional one.

Mischaracterizing the Supreme Court’s decisions can be dangerous. For example, after the court upheld an Indiana voter identification law, conservatives claimed that any voter identification law was acceptable. Numerous states then passed voter identification laws that were successfully challenged in court.