On What The Constitution Means

“BEST PLAY OF THE YEAR” New York Times · New Yorker · TIME · Hollywood Reporter · Newsweek · BuzzFeed · Forbes · New York · NPR · Washington Post · Entertainment Weekly · Los Angeles Times · Chicago Tribune Finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama When she was fifteen years old, Heidi Schreck started traveling the country, taking part in constitutional debates to earn money for her college tuition. Decades later, in What the Constitution Means to Me, she traces the effect that the Constitution has had on four generations of women in her family, deftly examining how the United States’ founding principles are inextricably linked with our personal lives.

Typescript, DRAFT-IN-PROGRESS dated 09/23/18. Typescript sporadically marked with pencil by videographer. Used by The New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Archive on Nov. 1, 2018, when videorecording the stage production at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, New York, N.Y., directed by Oliver Butler.

From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.

What did the Constitution mean to early Americans? Ostensibly the foundational document of a sovereign American people, the U.S. Constitution affected different kinds of Americans in very different ways. Modern historians have investigated its impact on various groups in an effort to determine what the Constitution meant to the founding generation of Americans. Exploring how early Americans shaped, responded to, and debated the document, this volume's 5 selections attempt to gauge the Constitution's ultimate success in forging a government based on the consent of the American people.

This book argues that the Constitution has a dual nature. The first aspect, on which legal scholars have focused, is the degree to which the Constitution acts as a binding set of rules that can be neutrally interpreted and externally enforced by the courts against government actors. This is the process of constitutional interpretation. But according to Keith Whittington, the Constitution also permeates politics itself, to guide and constrain political actors in the very process of making public policy. In so doing, it is also dependent on political actors, both to formulate authoritative constitutional requirements and to enforce those fundamental settlements in the future. Whittington characterizes this process, by which constitutional meaning is shaped within politics at the same time that politics is shaped by the Constitution, as one of construction as opposed to interpretation. Whittington goes on to argue that ambiguities in the constitutional text and changes in the political situation push political actors to construct their own constitutional understanding. The construction of constitutional meaning is a necessary part of the political process and a regular part of our nation's history, how a democracy lives with a written constitution. The Constitution both binds and empowers government officials. Whittington develops his argument through intensive analysis of four important cases: the impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson, the nullification crisis, and reforms of presidential-congressional relations during the Nixon presidency.