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Lepore: Amendments are how 'We the People' change the Constitution, not just the courts
Summary
Historian Jill Lepore told a Concord Museum audience that constitutional change is chiefly a product of amendment efforts and public contestation, noting 27 ratified amendments and more than 12,000 proposals introduced in Congress.
Jill Lepore, author of We the People, told an audience at the Concord Museum that Americans too often treat the Constitution as a fixed artifact rather than an evolving political practice. “The Constitution is in fact the spirit of our belief about what the Constitution is,” Lepore said, arguing that amendment proposals are the primary vehicle for popular constitutional change.
Lepore cited the small number of ratified federal changes—27 amendments—against “more than 12,000” amendment proposals introduced in Congress, and said that over the 20th and 21st centuries courts and the executive branch have taken on much of the work of constitutional change. “An unamendable constitution, by definition, has lost its legitimacy,” she said, urging renewed public deliberation about whether amendment should play a larger role. The talk covered historical patterns in which major political upheavals produced clusters of amendments and called attention to the long political work amendment movements require.
