[BLANK_AUDIO] Welcome back at this point, we've reached a particular interesting juncture in our guided tour of the written Constitution. We've talked about the Preamble. How the constitution was ordained an established by the people. We've talked about Articles one, two and three. Vesting powers in the congress and a president and a judiciary that legislative executive and judicial powers respectively. We've talked about Article four, which outlines the significance of horizontal federalism. The relationship of states between amongst themselves and, and vis-a-vis the federal government and the territories. We've talked about articles five, six, and seven which showcase the idea of the supremacy of the constitution. How, amendments to the constitution require specially broad democratic consensus in article five. How the Constitution is the supreme land of the land, notwithstanding anything that the state might say to the contrary, or Congress, or the president, or federal courts for that matter. In Article six, and we've talked how article seven completes the project, mirroring and echoing the preamble kind of, bookends to the preamble. Specifying the particular ways in which we the people of the United States, via special conventions, did, in fact, ordain, and establish the constitution. And in way, ways that we did so that actually originally did not involve all thirteen states saying, yes, we do, but originally only eleven. Nine would have sufficed for the constitution to go into effect. Among those states so ratifying. So, so that's where we are. We've come to the end of the original constitution and now we're going to start talking about the amendments. And we reached, as I said, a particularly interesting juncture because it turns out that the amendments are tacked onto the end of the document. That didn't have to have been the case. In many state Constitutions, amendments are basically woven into the earlier document. They in effect, the earlier document is word-processed, and you, you get version 2.0 and 3.0 and it looks just seamless. But that's not how our constitution, the federal constitution that is has in fact been amended. Tha, that the textual amendments have just been added to the end chronologically as so many post scripts. PS's, PP's, and PP's like a careless written letter, a critic actually once said. But, but this is a reminder of one hugely important truth about the Constitution. That our Constitution is an inter-generational project. It's not merely the achievement of a group of founders, but actually, a group of founders and amenders. Later generations of Americans are going to add these texts of the Constitution. And we're going to be able to see them the contributions of these later generations, with distinctive clarity, because it turns out the amendments were added sequentially and chronologically. So we've been talking a lot about the founding era in the lectures thus far. The lectures going forward are going to carry us forward in time through a Bill of Rights that actually arose in the founding era, and a couple of other early amendments. And then a later spurt of amendments after the Civil War. Another burst of amendments at the beginning of the 20th century. A final burst of amendments at the, in the middle and end of the 20th century. So, so the juncture that we've reached is one in which we're beginning to close the book on, on the original constitution, and open the book on the world of constitutional amendment. And this seems a good point so the, to it reminds us of just the larger Constitutional project, before I start to talk about the, the early amendments, which we call the Bill of Rights. That phrase, in fact, is not in the Constitution, and I'll tell you a little bit about the origins of this phrase, the Bill of Rights. But before I do, before I talk about Amendments one to ten. The first set of amendments which, in the Constitution, in the written Constitution. Start right after article seven. But before I do that, let me just stop and pause and, and say a word or two about this extraordinary, inter-generational constitutional project. And, and, and its, its world historical a, achievements and, and significance. What have the American people, over the course of our history, actually given to the world. And I think we've given to the world some extraordinary things, hm, and, these things are part of a larger inter-generational constitutional project. The project in some sense, begins even before the Constitution with the achievement of independence. A declaration of independence, which let's remember actually gave reasons for breaking the ties that had bound the colonists to the Mother Country. So it was important that Americans actually put down on paper their justification. They submitted facts to a candid world about why they felt impelled to separate from King George. Because of all the abuses that had been perpetrated and how their petitions and remonstrances had fallen on deaf ears. Our revolution was organized around that ideas and principles, it stood for something. You, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident. And, and certain principles were, were put forward. And those principles weren't always understood expansively and all men are created equal, those words. Were penned by a slave holder who doesn't free his slaves at his death, Thomas Jefferson. Yet, those words would grow over time inter-generationally. Lincoln's generation would give those words a deeper and richer meaning than the founders did. And those words will continue to grow and expand over the course of American constitutional history, and that's what we're going to be talking about. How the words from early eras do get built upon by later generations. But, the American revolution was a successful military revolution that was organized around ideas. It does not, even though many people in America are opposed to independence. This successful colonial revolution does not end in a blood bath. In the streets with people slitting each others throats in civil society the way the French Revolution does. It, it doesn't end with, with, with a kind of despotism that one sees with the later Russian revolution, Chinese revolution. As revolutions go military revolutions its a successful colonial revolution its rather admirable its not completely bloodless its not velvet there had to be a war. Its not quite like the Czech Velvet Revolution in the late twentieth century. But its pretty impressive, folks who opposed the Revolution are not guillotined. They're, they're kind of voted off the island, they're politically ostracized, but still pretty impressive. There's a military leader who emerges, George Washington, and he gives up military power, he surrenders it. That's not true in most revolutions. These military figures actually hold onto power forever, thee Fidel Castro's, and Ho Chi Minh's, and Mao, Tse Tung's and, and, and Lenin. So, so, in the history of the world, these, Napoleon. The American revolution is, is pretty impressive, it seems to me. It's about ideas. And, and, and the dissenters are, are, ostracized, to some extent, the, the loyalist. But, but, not guillotined, as will happen in the French Revolution. And this leads to a constitution. So that's the first big kind of American project. Modeling for the world, a successful colonial revolution, that doesn't spiral out of control. And it leads to and, and the Revolution is a kind of negation, saying no to something. We, we've cast off the English, though. We reject that. But then we have to build something, build something presumably better. To lay the foundations of, of, of a new government that will protect unalienable rights. That's the project, says the Declaration of Independence. It's the right and the duty of a people when they confront a tyrant to throw off the tyranny and erect new governments to alter and abolish their system to make it better. And the first iteration. The first round of, of great constitutional reform, very exciting constitutional reform in America is at the state level. A bunch of state constitutions emerging in 1776 and then, and thereafter. And trying out different ideas and there's some experimentation, and some state projects work, and others don't. The Massachusetts constitution for example in 1780 is put before the electorate and they say, yes modeling what will become a federal practice in 1788 of getting the entire continent to vote on a constitution. So the first round is state constitutions, and a lot of them are written, and they have Bills of Rights or Declarations of Rights. And they map the powers of government and they try to delimit the powers of government. And, and in some of them. Some of these state constitutions worked fairly well others less so. And there's a period of a democratic experimentation and then, the U.S. Constitution comes along and tries to build on the best practices of the state constitutions. Massachusetts put its Constitutions to a vote. That was a good idea, we'll do the same. Most states have three branches of government, we'll follow that model. Most states have bicameral legislatures, not Pennsylvania, we'll follow that model. Pennsylvania pays its lawmakers, that's a good idea. We'll do the same thing. Pennsylvania, New York provide for a census, so that when people move around the, the size of the, and shape of the legislature changes. We should do the same thing. Massachusetts has a strong executive branch. We think that's a good idea, we'll follow its example on that. And, and New York too, and so on. So, the framers are borrowing some of the best practices that have emerged from State Constitutions and that's the next great step in this epic Constitutional project. Giving the world and example of a continental democracy. Voted on up and down the continent by people I've chance to participate. I argued in the early lectures that was the hinge of human history, it was extraordinary. And that conversation that the Americans had up and down the continent is going to lead to future reforms like the Bill of Rights which were going to talk about very soon. So out of that conversation come additional good ideas and new idea when you get people talking to each other up and down the continent. But we are not done this inter generation project is only getting started it needs to secure it, its the, this new fledgling nation. It's, it's security and, and geostrategic independence, and, and this is going to ultimately mean that Louisiana is going to be the, the territory, is going to be acquired from France. You kick kind of the old [UNKNOWN] regime, the old monarchies out of the new world. The most the most important constitutional decisions in America haven't always been court cases. They, they involve presidential actions like Jefferson acquiring Louisiana. Marberry versus Madison is the same year 1803. But I don't think it's the most important constitutional decision of all time. It's not even the most important constitutional decision of 1803. It's the Louisiana Purchase. Remember Marbury versus Madison says courts can strike down acts of congress that they think are unconstitutional. But courts don't do that very often. That's the only time John Marshall does it, that's the only time, actually, judicial review actually occurs at the Supreme Court level. of, vis-a-vis an act of Congress for the entire Antebellum period, actually from the entire period before 1850. and, and so judicial review is going to become important later on, but Marbury in context isn't so important. It's the Louisiana Purchase. Which doubles the size of the United States and, and now here's the next big constitutional project. Taking all this virgin territory and turning these territories into republican states that will be admitted on equal footing, on equal terms with the old states. We're not going to colonize over these, these new lands, and that's an extraordinary project. So if an anti-colonial project. We're going to take an entire continent, eventually and basically working our way from the eastern sea board and work our way all the way to the pacific ocean. Take these territories and eventually turn them into states. It's a great, epic project. It can be criticized. There are losers in this project, the Native Americans are the big losers in this project of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. But we create at the end of this, and it's an epic constitutional achievement, and it takes time to do, we create a continental republic of equal states. Where no state gets to lord over other states. Lincoln's project, you will recall, is unifying the nation not just North and South, resisting unilateral secession but East and West through a transcontinental railroad. It's an epic constitutional project, it will succeed in creating a great superpower. The next great constitutional project, ending slavery. Remember the framers comprised with slavery they created a house divided. They were lucky, we were just lucky that this western territory wasn't all slavery. It could have been. Nothing in the Constitution prevented that. Fortunately the Indians were defeated in the north in Ohio before they were and early on. And so lots of, of settlement occurred actually in the northwest. Before it occurred in the south west, and the path of expansion didn't result in all the territories being slave territories, as might have happened. And then, boy, American history would be very different, but it, but it didn't quite happen that way, and but it was still a house divided. It wasn't all slavery, but it wasn't all free this western land, and eventually a war will come. We're going to talk about that a lot in later lectures. Because slavery in the territories was just sort of left an, an open question. But the next great constitutional project and again, remember, we're kind of beginning to carry the story forward in time, so this is a, a preview of, of coming attractions. The next great constitutional project would be ending slavery, Lincoln's constitutional project affirming the equal rights of black Americans. Their civil rights and eventually their political rights, their equal voting rights. Preserving liberty not just against the central government, but against the states. That's going to be a great reconstruction project and, and all these promises are made. They're not fully lived out until really later in the 20th and early 21st Century, but it's an amazing Constitutional example for the world. Imagine how different the world would look if America hadn't ended slavery. And then Hitler comes along with his principles of Arian supremacy and, and he intro, reintroduces slavery into the continent of Europe. And that might have succeeded had America still been a slave-holding society or a society committed to the supremacy of one race over another. But America wasn't that by the time Hitler comes along. America is an anti-slavery society by the time Hitler comes along. Committed to a principle of racial equality. It's not living it out fully yet, but it's committed to that principal. That idea that all men are created equal has now been, in effect, written into the Constitution. And not just the Declaration of Independence. Now it's part of the supreme law of the land. And it means something far more robust. And we're still not done with that American constitutional project, because of America's military might. And its principles begun in the Declaration of Independence and built upon. America in the Twentieth Century will defeat Naziism, and Italian fascism, and Japanese military aggressive Imperialistic authoritarianism. And a cold war will emerge after that. And, and our vision will basically thwart, Soviet communism. and, in the process, we will begin to rebuild the world in our image. A martial plan rebuilding Western Europe. Taking Japan and, and rebuilding it as a, as a more tolerant, democratic, open society, and Germany too. It's an extraordinary Constitutional project made powerful by the geostrategic might of the United States. By, by Lincoln's vision to unify the nation north and south, and east and west, and stand fast on the idea that slavery is wrong. And must end and ultimately, the deep principle is that all men are created equal. But, but think about how many societies in the history of the world have ever sort of, I think, done as much as, as the United States has, from the Declaration to the present moment, and let me say one other thing about the present moment. In our lifetime, we are genuinely living out the this idea of a multicultural, multi-religious, multilingual society where everyone really is created equal. We're beginning to really, not just redeem, the, the, the, the promise of these later constitutional amendments that promise equality. Barack Obama is president of the United States. Pretty striking. People of all faiths are eligible to run for office, even the highest office in the land and people of no faith. it's, it's, it's open to all, low-born people, high-born people. Great cities like New York and, and San Francisco are places, really, where North meets South and East meets West. Where people from all the world from Asia from Africa from northern Europe from southern Europe are coming together. In this new world and modeling I think for the rest of the world, an example of genuinely democratic pluralistic multicultural society. It began with the Declaration of Independence. It traveled through the Constitution, and the War of 1812, a sort of re, re-secured independence and the Louisiana Purchase. And, and the, the democratization of and Republicanization of, of the west. Ending of, of slavery, the the, the rebuilding of the House divided. the, extraordinary world, achievements, of America in World War Two, and the Cold War. Basically vindicating our fundamental values against those of, of intolerance, and repression, and the [UNKNOWN] regime and, and that story continues. So, to conclude this lecture, and then we'll start talking about the amendments. The amendments are reminded that our constitutional project does not end in 1789. It's an intergenerational project. The project actually is ongoing today. The Big Bang, of, of you, if you will, of the founding which created this amazing reverberation to certain democratic momentum for America in the world. We're still feeling all of that. And what we're going to do for the rest of this segment of the course, as we work through the rest of the Constitution after Article seven is, carry our story forward in time. Through a Bill of Rights, through the Jeffersonian era and then Lincoln's generation. And then that, that progressive area of the twentieth, of the early twentieth century. The 1960's amendments, the second reconstruction, and up to the present. so, stay tuned. [MUSIC]
