We the People: Jill Lepore
“We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” lives up to its title.
Historian Jill Lapore’s massive book tells the story of the Constitution from its origins to recent court decisions affecting how we perceive it.
While “We the People” touches on the Constitutional Convention of 1789, this isn’t a comprehensive look at the creation of the Constitution.
Instead, the brunt of “We the People’s” story settles on the battles to amend the Constitution while its interpretation has become the realm of the Supreme Court.
Article V sets the stage for constitutional amendments through proposal and ratification. A two-thirds vote in the House and Senate must back a proposal for a constitutional amendment, or it must be proposed during a constitutional convention backed by two-thirds of state legislatures. (Note: Despite numerous calls through the years, there has never been a second constitutional convention.) Then, the amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states.
Amending the Constitution was meant to be difficult; however, amendments weren’t meant to be impossible, which is what amending the Constitution has become in our age of partisan polarization.
As Lapore spells out: While nearly 12,000 amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, “and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only 27 have ever been ratified.” Only 27 amendments in our nation’s history. The Constitution has not been amended since 1971.
Without real recourse to amendment, the Constitution is “changed/adapted” by Supreme Court decisions. As Americans learned with the issue of abortion, a right granted by the Supreme Court can be taken by the Supreme Court. In other words, new Supreme Court decisions can overturn the United States we have come to know in the past handful of decades.
Amendments take decisions out of the Supreme Court’s hands … or at least they should.
Lapore challenges the idea of constitutional originalism advocated by right-leaning judges in recent years, where the court assumes to know the original intent of the Constitution, its amendments and the motives of the people behind their ratification.
As she did with her U.S. history book, “These Truths,” Lapore tells the story of the Constitution through a panorama of American eyes, inclusive of gender, race, background and abilities. While the Constitution took a while to determine what the Founders meant by “We the People,” Lapore strives to include perspectives of all of the people in her “We the People.”
Her book illustrates the fights to make that title inclusive. Future struggles may determine how inclusive “We the People” remains.
Captain America: Our Secret Wars
Writer Chip Zdarsky and the art team of Valero Schiti, penciller/inker, and Frank Martin, colorist, create the best Captain America story in recent years.
“Captain America: Our Secret Wars” has it all: riveting action, skewing of politics, reflections on war, character insights, a twist on a familiar story regarding Cap’s return, and a better use of Dr. Doom in a few issues than the entire run of “One World Under Doom.”
Here, Steve Rogers/Captain America is only a few weeks back from having spent decades frozen after World War II. He is a man out of time, adjusting, wondering if the world has passed him by. He finds America still at war – this time in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the aftermath of 9/11.
Steve Rogers meets David Colton, the new Captain America, who must make sense of heroism in a complicated war.
Cap/Steve Rogers goes from facing the fascism of Hitler one day to awake decades later to face the fascism of Doctor Doom.
It all works in the framework presented: A dash of realism with a splash of the fantastic.
Zdarsky, Schiti and Martin create something special with “Our Secret Wars.” And it’s just the beginning. “Our Secret Wars” is the first five issues of this creative team’s run on “Captain America.” Well worth finding these issues, or the trade paperback collecting them.
