We the People

Historian Jill Lepore, who teaches history and law at Harvard, sets out to explain why the U.S. Constitution, among the oldest in the world, is also one of the hardest to amend. Drawing on a database she assembled through the Amendments Project, she recounts centuries of efforts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to change it, nearly all of which failed. Since 1789 Congress has seen nearly twelve thousand proposed amendments, with thousands more put forward outside it, yet only twenty-seven were ratified, and there has been no meaningful amendment since 1971. Without that outlet, Lepore argues, the risk grows of political violence and of change imposed by presidents or judges. She challenges originalism and the Supreme Court's monopoly on interpretation.

Barack Obama included it among his favorite books of 2025.