We the People

Lepore's organizing move is to read the Constitution through Article V, the amendment clause, arguing that the framers expected continual revision rather than the near-sacred fixity the document has since acquired. From there she traces how amendment became progressively harder in practice, and how the Warren Court's living-constitutionalism eventually gave way to Scalia-era originalism, with the Supreme Court itself increasingly functioning as a de facto amending body through interpretation rather than the formal process the framers designed. The history is genuinely novel in its emphasis, but the book's reach exceeds its editing in places: several reviewers who admired the argument still found the book longer than the material strictly required, with digressions that dilute the central thesis rather than deepen it.