Award-winning author, historian, podcast host, and New Yorker staffer Jill Lepore challenges both the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and what she identifies as the flawed theory of “originalism” in her new book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, a companion to her history of the United States, These Truths.
Drawing from the database Lepore assembled at the Amendments Project, she discusses why one of the oldest constitutions in the world is so difficult to amend, so much so that a meaningful amendment has not been added since 1971. She discusses how, since 1789, nearly 12 thousand amendments have been introduced and thousands more proposed, yet only 27 have been ratified, and why this is so dangerous to our democracy.
In four other Library appearances over 14 years, Lepore has spoken about her books The Deadline; These Truths: A History of the United States, a wide-angle examination of the origins and evolution of our country from Columbus to Trump; Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, about writer and younger sister of Benjamin Franklin; and The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History, a wry and bemused look at American history according to the far right.
Lepore published this latest book on the occasion of the nation’s 250th anniversary. She earned her Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University and is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University.
