Jill Lepore

Review: We the People

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Cover image of "We the People" by Jill Lepore

We the People

We the People, Jill Lepore. Liveright (ISBN: 9781631496080) 2025.

Summary: A history of the Constitution, focusing on the amendments and how difficult it has been to amend the constitution.

Do you know what amendment took the longest time to ratify? It was the most recent, the 27th Amendment, concerning congressional pay, which took 203 years to ratify, finally in 1992. Do you know the last amendment to be proposed and ratified in modern times? It was the 26th Amendment, which was ratified in 1971, giving eighteen-year-olds the right to vote, just in time for me to vote when I turned 18! Depending on how you count, it has been 34 or 55 years since the last amendment proposed was ratified. It’s not for lack of trying, as historian Jill Lepore observes in this book. Notably the Equal Rights Amendment, broadly favored by Americans never was ratified by enough states. Although a majority would like to see this, no amendment has passed out of Congress to abolish the electoral college.

We the People is a constitutional history which focuses the history of constitutional amendments of which there have been only twenty-seven in our 250 year history. But why so few? It all comes down to Article V of the constitution. First, two thirds of both houses of congress must approve an amendment. Then either legislatures or special conventions of three-fourths of the states must ratify the amendment.

Lepore observes that amendments tend to come in clusters. The first twelve were between 1791 (the Bill of Rights, numbers One to Ten) and 1804. The next amendments, Thirteen to Fifteen, followed the Civil War, between 1865 and 1870. Then Sixteen to Twenty-One, which included Prohibition and its repeal, income tax, and women’s suffrage dated between 1913 and 1933. Finally, the most recent group came between 1951 and 1971, Amendments Twenty-Two to Twenty-Six, addressing presidential term limits, DC electors, eliminating poll taxes, presidential succession, and voting for 18-year-olds. Then there was that oddball, the 27th, on congressional pay raises, resurrected from 1789 and finally ratified in 1992.

Lepore traces the periods of amendment and the intervening periods of quiescence. Of particular interest is the growing significance of the Supreme Court, at various times treating the constitution as a living document, adapting it to changing cultural needs. Then at other times, especially more recently, originalism treats the constitution as “dead, dead, dead” in Justice Scalia’s words. All the court may do is interpret and apply it original meaning. Everything else must be addressed by Article V.

But how are amendments possible in such a polarized congress and society? And what happens when neither amendments nor court interpretations address emerging societal realities? Lepore expresses concern about the possibilities of unrest as well as moves away from constitutional democratic governance. She sees neither an activist or originalist court as the answer but a return to a more robust embrace of amendments as the needed “safety valve” that properly allows for constitutional rule that grows with the needs of the country.

She concludes:

“No constitution can be kept forever, like a butterfly under glass, tacked down with pins. In danger of wilting. To constitute is to become or establish; to amend is to mend, correct, repair, and improve. Americans might learn again to amend, or else they could invent a new instrument to guarantee liberty, promote equality, nurture families, knit communities, thwart tyranny, and avert the destruction of a habitable earth” (p. 581).

Lepore has done a tremendous work of historiography. She also has left us with good questions. But I have a hard time seeing a way forward in our current political context and that concerns me. Attempting to draft a new constitution scares me more, the implication of “invent a new instrument.” Some of the basic premises about human nature and political philosophy that the original drafters shared are no longer shared. I cannot foresee anything but chaos ensuing. It seems to me that a critical beginning is a renewed sense of shared congressional vision, leadership, and collaboration. But will we awaken to that necessity?

The Weekly Wrap: June 28-July 4

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The Weekly Wrap: June 28-July 4

America at 250

One of conversations those of my age have is comparing our celebration of America at 250 with the celebrations of the Bicentennial in 1976. For many, this doesn’t hold a candle. In 1976, we had emerged from a war. But in 2026, we are in the middle of a conflict. In 1976, we had the tall ships. This year, we have controversy about the reflecting pool. In fact, 1976 seemed a time of comparative unity, without the partisan controversies of today.

My sense is that many people don’t feel much like celebrating, except for the advances of U.S. Soccer in the World Cup and local fireworks displays. (And maybe we can add Travis’ and Taylor’s wedding!).

But there is much to love and celebrate about this country, apart from our troubled politics. Consider the varied beauty of our geography. While no government is perfect, our constitution with its balancing of powers, and its Bill of Rights stands as a singular document. We have hardly lived up to our aspiration to “liberty and justice for all.” Our commitment to the rule of law has protected us from tyranny. Moreover it has led to the eventual righting of many wrongs.

We are the inheritors of a tremendous heritage ranging from practices of governance to our history at its best and worst, and the cultural riches of American literature, art, music, and dance. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, or Georgia O’Keefe; George Gershwin, New Orleans jazz, Paul Simon, and Martha Graham and Leonard Bernstein. Wherever we turn, we stumble on a rich cultural heritage.

Cultural criticism is easy. However, culture-keeping and culture-creation, as Makoto Fujimura and Andy Crouch have discussed, begins with building on what is good and preserving and enhancing it. So, this edition of The Weekly Wrap focuses on articles that consider our national story, identity, and vision for the future. Happy Independence Day!

Five Articles Worth Reading

I have been reading Jill Lepore’s We the People on the history of our Constitution, and particular its amendments. Therefore, I was interested to come across this interview, “Jill Lepore on What to Read This Fourth of July” in which she not only offers reading suggestions share some of her own opinions about the future of the Constitution. While I don’t agree with some of what she has to say, she points up some critical challenges we face.

But what is proper patriotism, that doesn’t stray in nationalism. Martha Nusbaum, in “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” addresses this question. Her address was part of a forum that includes over twenty responses from a variety of luminaries.

Then JSTOR offers a wide array of readings in “Celebrating the Fourth of July” including several historical documents!

Mere Orthodoxy offers an “America250 Forum in two installments that includes several authors whose work I’ve reviewed. The installments are “America250 Forum, Day 1: The Idea of America” and “America250 Forum Day 2: The Weight of History.”

Finally, the first pope born in the United States offers his perspective on our 250th in “Toward a more perfect union.”

Quote of the Week

Franz Kafka, who was born on July 3, 1883, offers this wisdom. I wonder if it applies to nations as well as individuals:

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

Miscellaneous Musings

For a time, I lived just up the street from the gifted guitarist Phil Keaggy. When he was working on his first solo album, I remember listening to tracks from it that he had recorded on his reel-to-reel tape deck. And when “What a Day” came out, I played it over and over again. John B. Hatch has just written a book, Oh What A Day studying the artistry of that album, and offered me a copy, not knowing my own connection. What a surprise and delight for both of us!

So, I mentioned reading Jill Lepore. We the People is not for the faint of heart. It’s a 600 page history of the Constitution and its amendments. For her, the Constitution is too difficult to amend (two percent of the people can actually kill an amendment).

Lastly, I find reading the Bible with others always opens my eyes. That was especially true as I read Reading the Bible on Turtle Island. Two North American indigenous writer discuss the insights they gain from scripture read through their own cultural lenses. I’ll be reviewing it next week.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Daniel Silliman, Reading Evangelicals

Tuesday: Mark Deymaz, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace

Wednesday: Iris Murdoch, The Red and The Green

Thursday: T. Christopher Hoklotubbe and H. Daniel Zecharias, Reading the Bible on Turtle Island

Friday: Collin Hansen, Skyler R. Flowers, and Ivan Mesa, editors, The Gospel After Christendom

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for June 28-July 4.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: The Story of America

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Cover image of "The Story of America" by Jill Lepore

The Story of America, Jill Lepore. Princeton University Press (ISBN: 9780691153995) 2012.

Summary: Essays on American origins from Jamestown and the Constitution to the IOU and Webster’s dictionary.

Nations as well, as individuals strive for self-understanding. Much of this comes through the stories we tell of ourselves, particularly the stories of our origins. That is, we try to understand how we got here as a way of understanding who we are. This is what Jill Lepore strives to do in this collection of essays on the story of America. Rather than a comprehensive, beginning to the present account, she offers a variety or origin stories, arranged roughly in chronological order.

Most of these essays first appeared in The New Yorker. Lepore says, “I wrote them because I wanted to learn how to tell stories better. But mostly, I wrote them because I wanted to explain how history works, and how it’s different than politics.” She adds to this her definition of doing history: “History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.”

She begins with the primal origin story, the settlement of Jamestown through the lens of Captain John Smith, who gave us our first account of the settlement, concluding that while he was an “Elizabethan gallant,” he was not a fraud. The colony was a mixture of success and catastrophe, American dream and American nightmare.

Subsequent essays consider the Puritans and the succession of historians who have tried to tell their story, Franklin’s The Way to Wealth, and the career of Thomas Paine, hailed for Common Sense and excoriated for The Age of Reason. She writes on the 4,400 words of the Constitution, often not read and even less understood, and the meanings that have accrued, including originalism as one form of interpretation.

From key events and ideas, Lepore moves to origins less noticed but also significant, for example, the origins of the I.O.U. and the development of bankruptcy law. Particularly fascinating is Lepores avvount of Noah Webster and his dictionary, begun in 1800 and ended in 1828. She reflects on his singular effort in defining 70,000 words compared to Johnson’s 43,000. He defined American words using American examples in his definitions and dug into the etymology of words. And Webster, a religious man whose faith was implicit in the work, reaped the benefit of the religious revivals coinciding with the dictionary’s publication.

She turns to the art of presidential biographies, particularly those on Washington to Jackson. And then there is that inferior item, the campaign biography! She weighs in on Jefferson and the Hemings family. She chronicles Charles Dickens’ journeys in America and his decided dislike for the country. Paired with Dickens in the following essay is Edgar Allan Poe. No love lost between the two men. She charts Poe’s struggle with poverty, his drinking and the question of whether Poe was a genius or mad. Then there are our heroes and the accounts that make them bigger than life, from the dime novels on Kit Carson to Longfellow’s Paul Revere. Added to these is Earl Derr Biggars’ Charlie Chan based on Hawaiian Chang Apana. Chan was hailed as great crime fiction in the day and for invidious racial stereotyping today.

Along the way are essays on the development of voting ballots and Clarence Darrow on a major labor case. One essay discusses the Great Migration. the subject of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, another on homicide and the death penalty. She concludes with the daunting task of writing inaugural addresses. Certainly, James Garfield was daunted, reading his predecessors. Only Lincoln really excelled. Most were mediocre to awful. Most address some version of history as they look to the future. But even the best speakers are rarely at their best here.

One of Lepore’s observations is the role of literacy in these stories. The story of our democracy is a story of reading and writing. She believes “Americans wrote and read their way into a political culture….” This, for me begs the question of the future of our democracy in our post-literate culture that wallows in an epistemic crisis. Instead of “stories accountable to evidence” we resort to fake news memes created with increasing visual sophistication. And it seems we are recreating our origin stories, engaging in both erasure and fable, attacking the history that is accountable to evidence. If nothing else, what Lepore does is remind us, in engaging story, of our real origins. And she reminds us of what we may easily lose.