You’ve probably heard the phrase "We the People" a thousand times in civics class, but honestly, have you ever looked at the U.S. Constitution and wondered if the thing is actually broken? That’s the heavy lifting Jill Lepore takes on in her latest work. She’s not just rehashing 1787; she’s basically performing an autopsy on why we’ve stopped fixing our own government.
It’s kind of wild to think about. We live in a country that prides itself on progress, yet we haven't meaningfully updated our foundational "operating system" since 1971. That was the year the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. Since then? Dead silence.
👉 See also: Why Yulan Adonay Archaga Carias is Still on the FBI Most Wanted List
Jill Lepore’s We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution (2025) isn't your typical dry history book. It’s more like a warning. She argues that the Framers never meant for the Constitution to be a "butterfly under glass"—this sacred, untouchable thing that can never be smudged. Instead, they saw it as a machine that needed constant tinkering. If you don't change the oil, the engine eventually seizes.
The Myth of the "Sacred" Document
A lot of people today treat the Constitution like it’s a religious text. If you suggest changing it, someone usually screams about "erasing the Founders' intent." But Lepore, using her massive database at the Amendments Project, shows that the Founders actually expected us to change it. A lot.
They weren't looking for perfection; they were looking for a way to prevent political violence.
Think about it this way: if a society has no legal way to change its rules, the only way left to change them is through force. Lepore points out that the risk of political violence goes up every year that we stay in this constitutional "stasis." We’re essentially trying to run 2026 software on 1787 hardware, and the system is crashing.
The book dives into thousands of failed attempts to amend the document. Did you know there have been nearly 12,000 amendments introduced in Congress? Most of them never even made it out of the gate. But those failures tell a story. They tell us what Americans actually wanted—things like direct election of the president (abolishing the Electoral College) or environmental protections.
🔗 Read more: John Aguillard and the Rattler Newspaper: What Really Happened Behind the Scenes
Why We Stopped Mending
The word "amendment" shares the same root as the word "mend." You fix things that are torn. But somewhere along the way, we lost the ability to mend. Lepore suggests that the rise of "originalism"—the idea that we must interpret the law exactly as it was understood in the 18th century—has essentially handcuffed us.
It’s a bit of a paradox, isn't it? We use the "intent" of men from 250 years ago to stop ourselves from making the very changes those men told us we should make.
Lepore isn't just picking on the Supreme Court, though she’s definitely not a fan of their "monopoly" on interpretation. She’s also looking at us. The "People" in Jill Lepore We the People refers to the grassroots movements—abolitionists, suffragists, labor activists—who used to be the ones driving constitutional change. Today, we mostly just wait for a court ruling to tell us what our rights are. We’ve become passive.
The Ticking Time Bomb of the Electoral College
One of the most frustrating stories Lepore unearths involves the 1960s-era push to abolish the Electoral College. It almost happened! It had massive bipartisan support. But it was killed by a weird mix of Southern segregationists and, surprisingly, some civil rights groups who feared it would dilute their influence in northern cities.
It was a "ticking time bomb" then, and it’s still ticking now.
Lepore's research highlights how pettiness and short-term political "payback" often derailed amendments that could have stabilized the country for centuries. It makes you realize that our current polarization isn't exactly new, but our inability to move past it is.
The Problem with "Butterfly Under Glass" History
We tend to teach history as a series of inevitable wins. 1776 happened, then we got the Constitution, then we fixed slavery with the Civil War, then women got the vote. Boom. Done.
✨ Don't miss: The 1877 Great Railroad Strike: Why America Almost Collapsed in 45 Days
But Lepore shows that history is actually a "rich tapestry" of people screaming into the void. She spends a lot of time on the voices we usually ignore:
- Enslaved people who wrote petitions for freedom using the language of the Revolution.
- Women who argued for the "sovereignty of the person" long before the 19th Amendment.
- Native Americans whose lands were the literal foundation of the "property" the Constitution was designed to protect.
She even digs into weird stuff, like how Southern segregationists in the Jim Crow era kept proposing the repeal of the 14th Amendment. Why? They were already ignoring it. But they wanted the legal right to ignore it. It shows that even the villains of history understood that the Constitution is the ultimate prize in the fight for power.
How to "Disenthrall" Ourselves
So, where does this leave us? Honestly, it’s a bit grim. Lepore doesn't offer a 10-point plan for a new constitutional convention (in fact, she’s pretty cautious about that). But she does echo Abraham Lincoln’s call to "disenthrall ourselves."
We have to stop being "enthralled" or hypnotized by the idea that the Constitution is a finished product.
If we want to avoid "constitutional change by judicial fiat"—where five or six people in robes decide everything—we have to reclaim the "philosophy of amendment." We have to believe that we, the people living now, have the right to fix the machinery.
Practical Next Steps for the Engaged Citizen:
- Explore the Amendments Project: Don't just take Lepore's word for it. Look at the database she built at Harvard. See the thousands of ways Americans have tried to "mend" the country. It gives you a sense of "constitutional possibility" that you won't get from the evening news.
- Challenge Originalism in Conversation: Next time someone says "that's not what the Founders intended," remind them that the Founders intended for us to change the document. They built Article V for a reason.
- Support Structural Reform, Not Just Policy: We often get bogged down in fighting over specific laws. Lepore’s work suggests we should be looking at the rules of the game. Whether it's the Electoral College, term limits, or the way we handle the "administrative state," the structure of the Constitution itself is what needs the most attention.
- Read the "Failed" Amendments: Look into the history of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) or the various balanced budget proposals. Understanding why they failed can teach us how to build a more successful coalition in the future.
The Constitution isn't a museum piece. It’s a tool. And right now, it’s a tool that’s covered in rust because we’re too afraid to pick it up and use it. Jill Lepore’s We the People isn't just a history of what happened; it’s a ledger of what we’ve failed to do.