The Constitution
Notes & Videos
While the information on this page does include the full text of the US Constitution, that’s a lot to read through and digest. Use that as a reference, but if you’d like to start with an overview of the Constitution itself, I’d recommend some of these videos:
National Constitution Center
This dramaturgy packet features a lot of information about the U.S. Constitution, but if you’re looking for an even more interactive resource, check out the National Constitution Center’s website, linked below.
The National Constitution Center serves as America’s leading platform for constitutional education and debate, and features in-depth interpretations and debate for every Article and Amendment within the U.S. Constitution, as well as a plethora of classroom resources for educators.
Click the button below for more information.
The Basics
What came before the Constitution?
The Articles of Confederation was an agreement among the thirteen states of the United States, formerly the Thirteen Colonies, that served as the nation's first frame of government.
The need for the Constitution stemmed from issues with the Articles of Confederation, which established a “firm league of friendship” between the States, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. The power vested, however, was extremely limited. The central government could not raise any funds itself, and was entirely dependent on the States themselves for the money necessary to conduct diplomacy, make war, and settle State disputes. While this central government relied on votes from State delegates to make any progress, any decision of consequence required a unanimous vote, which left the central government largely ineffectual.
State delegates realized that the defects of the frame of government could not be remedied by merely altering the Articles, and decided instead to replace it with a new constitution.
What is the Constitution?
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government. According to the US Senate, “The Constitution defines the fundamental law of the U.S. federal government, setting forth the three principal branches of the federal government and outlining their jurisdictions. It has become the landmark legal document of the Western world, and is the oldest written national constitution currently in effect.”
In 1787, four short years after the end of the Revolutionary War, fifty-five white men gathered in Philadelphia and crafted a constitution that was to define the powers, duties, and laws of the U.S. federal government, as well as guarantee certain rights to its people. The creation of such an impactful document was not a simple task – these delegates debated, argued, and challenged one another for months, the rights of the American people in their hands.
The Constitution was signed by thirty-nine of the fifty-five delegates, it was ratified by the required nine states in June of the following year, and the new government began operations in March of 1789.
Who Was At The Constitutional Convention?
Delegates from all of the original states (except Rhode Island) participated in the Constitutional Convention. Many had fought in the Revolutionary War and had previously served in Congress. The delegates named George Washington presiding officer.
Of the fifty-five original delegates, only forty-one were present on September 17, 1787, to sign the final draft of the proposed Constitution, and thirty-nine of the delegates signed. Three of those present (George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts) refused to sign the Constitution. One delegate, John Dickinson of Delaware, was too sick to attend the final session but had fellow delegate George Read sign his name.
To learn more about the delegates from each state (with the exception of a few who never had portraits of themselves done) click on the images below.
The Basics - Continued
What are the Amendments?
The creators of the Constitution provided specific circumstances under which it could be amended, thus, leading to what we know as the Amendments. An amendment may be proposed by Congress and submitted to the states if it is approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress. Or, if two-thirds of state legislatures propose a convention to amend the Constitution, Congress must call that convention. Either way, an approved amendment needs to be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures to take effect.
The first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights. These initial amendments to the U.S. Constitution were proposed by Congress in late 1789, and certified two years later. The Constitution has been amended a total of twenty-seven times.
Constitutional Relevancy in the Play
Amendments
What The Constitution Means to Me covers a lot of ground, but focuses mostly on the Ninth Amendment and the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Ninth Amendment reads as follows:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
“Do you know what this means? It means that just because a certain right is not listed in the Constitution, it doesn’t mean you don’t have that right. The fact is there was no possible way for the framers to put down every single right we have - the right to brush your teeth, sure you've got it, but how long do we want this document to be?”
What the Ninth Amendment essentially boils down to is a compromise between two conflicting beliefs: those who support a Bill of Rights, in which every right the American people are entitled to is clearly listed; and those who oppose a Bill of Rights, who insist that the rights of the American people are entitled to Constitutional protection is too long a list to spell every individual item out in the document itself, and by only listing a few, it implies every other non-documented right is therefore unprotected.
The Ninth Amendment has not been used frequently as the basis for Supreme Court decisions, as it has frequently been criticized as being “too vague.”
The Fourteenth Amendment, Section One reads as follows:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“Okay. Okay. So the Fourteenth Amendment is like a giant, supercharged force field protecting all of your human rights. It comes right after the Thirteenth Amendment - which as you all know abolished slavery - ending the most shameful chapter in our nations history. Lincoln knew though that just ending slavery would not be enough, so he got his friend John Bingham to help him write the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments: The Reconstruction Amendments. These amendments made the newly freed slaves citizens, guaranteed them equal protection under the law, and protected their right to vote.
This amendment was a huge force in the civil rights movement. It facilitated the desegregation of schools, buses, and hospitals - although that would take almost a hundred years. And let's be clear, somebody had to activate the force field. It took the heroic work of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Height, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin to rouse the great powers of Amendment Fourteen.
I want to emphasize that this amendment guaranteed equal rights only to men. Black women were not given these rights. No women were given these rights. The question of Native American rights never even came up. Even Lincoln was trapped in a penumbra on that one.
This is the first time the word "male" is explicitly used in the Constitution. So, whereas before there was a little room for interpretation about whether women could vote, now it was explicit: We could not vote. Lincoln asked us to wait just a tiny bit longer to get the vote.”
The Fourteenth Amendment was one of three amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War that granted formerly enslaved people “official rights.” Specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment’s purpose was to protect the citizenship rights of these formerly enslaved people, by clearly defining that a U.S. citizen was “any persons born or naturalized within the United States.”
As is mentioned in the play, The Fourteenth Amendment is the first time the word “male” is explicitly used in the Constitution, which then poses the question: If according to the Fourteenth Amendment, no State may “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” are women considered to be people in the eyes of the Constitution?
The Fourteenth Amendment is one of the most cited amendments in litigation and has been used by the Supreme Court to affirm the citizenship of any child born in the U.S., regardless of the citizenship status of their parents; that citizens cannot be artificial people and a corporate body is not a citizen; that separate is not equal under the equal protection clause; to affirm a woman’s right to an abortion; and to affirm the right to same-sex marriage.
Since the publication of this play, some major things have changed. For more about how the Supreme Court has been interpreting and re-interpreting the Constitution in recent decisions, specifically citing the Fourteenth Amendment, please head over to the section “Relevant Supreme Court Cases.”
Negative Rights & Positive Rights
“I learned about two kinds of rights: negative rights and positive rights. Negative rights protect us from the government taking our stuff, locking us up, killing us. Positive rights are active rights.
They include things like the right to a fair trial, the right to counsel, in some countries the right to health care. Our Constitution, with some exceptions, is a negative-rights document.”
Negative and positive rights are laid out pretty clearly within the play itself, however, it is worth noting that the cause of much conflict is in which type of right takes priority. For example – in the Supreme Court case Castle Rock v. Gonzales, Jessica Lenahan (previously Gonzales) sued the Castle Rock Police Department for not enforcing the restraining order against her violent husband.
That enforcement, and the arrest that was meant to happen under Colorado law, were positive rights that Jessica should have had. However, when her case was taken up to the Supreme Court, Scalia referenced the Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment, and prioritized the negative rights laid out in the primarily negative-rights document, over the positive rights that the local law were meant to offer Lenahan. He, and the Supreme Court decided that in the phrase, “the police shall enforce a restraining order,” “shall” did not mean “must.”
Many other countries have positive-rights constitutions, and most of these constitutions have explicit gender protections written into them, unlike ours.
