We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution

Jill Lepore, 2025

Learn why the Constitution's amendment process broke down, from founding exclusions and Reconstruction's unfinished promise to the Equal Rights Amendment's defeat, and see why courts increasingly do that work instead.

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8 parts, about 28 minutes to read.

Why read it

Treats the Constitution as something people made and can repair, and traces how Article V amendment grew too hard to use
Uses failed amendments, petitions and conventions of excluded groups as evidence of needs that formal law did not meet
Shows how courts, from judicial review to originalism, took over constitutional change that amendment once carried

Who it is for

Readers of American history and constitutional law
Citizens asking why the Constitution so rarely changes
Readers following debates over the Supreme Court and originalism

What the summary covers

Amendment As Constitutional Repair2 min
Founding A Repairable Constitution4 min
Interpretation, Exclusion, And Insurrection7 min
Progressive Amendment And Conservative Resistance3 min
Brown, Rights, And The Court Centered Turn2 min
The Last Great Amendment Era5 min
Originalism And Judicial Amendment3 min
Recovering Constitutional Repair2 min

Recommended by

Timothy SnyderHistorian and author of On Tyranny
It is impossible to imagine a more instructive text on a more timely subject by a more accomplished historian
Barack Obama44th President of the United States

About the author

Jill LeporeHarvard professor of American history and staff writer at The New Yorker
- Born on 27 August 1966 in West Boylston, Massachusetts
- Received an M.A. in American culture from the University of Michigan in 1990
- Started at Harvard in 2003
- Has contributed to The New Yorker since 2005
- First book The Name of War (1998) won the Bancroft Prize
- Professor of Law at Harvard Law School as well as of American history