Akhil Reed Amar > Quotes

“The people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please,” explained Wilson. “It is a power paramount to every constitution, inalienable in its nature.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“Americans rewarded George Washington with the presidency. Indeed, the Electoral College unanimously backed Washington in 1789; every single elector who participated cast a vote for America’s George. By installing Washington by acclamation, Americans in effect consented yet again—truly, deeply—to the Constitution that was now inextricably intertwined with Washington himself.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“the most remarkable features of these first state constitutions were certain overarching elements that are now so commonplace that we forget how truly revolutionary they were in 1776: writtenness, concision, replicability, rights declaration, democratic pedigree, republican structure, and amendability. Never before in history had this particular combination of features come together.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Of course, much (though not all) of America’s “unwritten Constitution” does involve written materials, such as venerable Supreme Court opinions, landmark congressional statutes, and iconic presidential proclamations. These materials, while surely written texts, are nonetheless distinct from the written Constitution and are thus properly described by lawyers and judges as parts of America’s unwritten Constitution. America’s unwritten Constitution encompasses not only rules specifying the substantive content of the nation’s supreme law but also rules clarifying the methods for determining the meaning of this supreme law. Since the written Constitution does not come with a complete set of instructions about how it should be construed, we must go beyond the text to make sense of the text.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By

“The Massachusetts Convention declined to follow the Virginians down the tortuous rabbit hole of equality for me but not for thee.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“When out of power, Jefferson talked about judicial independence, but when in power, he never named a great and independent jurist to the bench because he was not, in truth, looking for judicial independence and excellence. He sought party loyalism.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Marshall here was a smooth and understated southern gentleman. Here is what he meant by “embarrassments”: Thanks to the Articles of Confederation’s inadequate authorization of Congressional power, America almost lost its War of Independence, and countless heroes died needlessly at Valley Forge and elsewhere. I would know; unlike my kinsman Jefferson, I was there. And so was Washington and so was Hamilton and so were many others who somehow survived and who later pointedly omitted the word “expressly” from the original Constitution and successfully opposed all efforts to insert it into the Bill of Rights.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“From the British point of view, who better to pay than colonists, who had been the war’s beneficiaries? The war, after all, had eliminated a major threat to British America. From the colonial point of view, why should colonists pay for a British shield that they no longer needed?”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“The written Constitution cannot work as intended without something outside of it—America’s unwritten Constitution—to fill in its gaps and to stabilize it. In”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By

“FRANKLIN AND WASHINGTON WERE AMERICA’S two greatest founding figures, and it is remarkable that Washington’s de facto farewell message, when he passed away in 1799 at his Mount Vernon home, was so similar in substance—though not at all in tone—to Franklin’s parting soliloquy. Metaphorically, both men died with abolition and emancipation on their lips. Rosebud. Franklin envisioned virtuous public action: Congress should pass laws freeing all slaves. Washington embodied virtuous private action: slaveholders should take actions freeing their own slaves, just as he was doing on his deathbed.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“with all America and the world looking on, the Federalists in New York at the end of the process reaffirmed what had been clear from the beginning: ratification would be “in toto, and for ever.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“After Vietnam and Watergate, much of the public has come to view the judiciary as more honest and competent than the politicians in other branches. Modern presidents and congressmen are far less likely to assert their own constitutional visions than were their antebellum predecessors. For example, in dramatic contrast to the pattern set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only a handful of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Inaugural Addresses have explicitly meditated upon the Constitution itself, and only a small percentage of recent veto messages have articulated objections based on the president’s independent constitutional judgment.23”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“In the near term, such compromises made possible a continental union of North and South that provided bountiful benefits to freeborn Americans. But in the long run, the Founders’ failure to put slavery on a path of ultimate extinction would lead to massive military conflict on American soil—the very sort of conflict whose avoidance was, as we shall now see, literally the primary purpose of the Constitution of 1788.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“in 1775 there arose a remarkable civic society that aimed to end slavery itself. The society was formed not by Johnson, nor in Johnson’s vaunted London, nor indeed anywhere in Britain proper, but rather in Philadelphia, the host city of the Continental Congress. Two of the society’s early leaders were Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, who both, in the summer of 1776, added their names to the American Declaration of Independence.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“The key that unlocks the door is the simple idea that no clause of the Constitution exists in textual isolation. We must read the document as a whole. Doing so will enable us to detect larger structures of meaning—rules”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By

“Yorktown, where friendly French soldiers and sailors had outnumbered American ground troops more than two to one.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Morgan, The Meaning of Independence, at 60: “He placed a higher value on collecting books and drinking good wine than he did on freeing his slaves.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“In the late 1780s, this was the most democratic deed the world had ever seen.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“Howsoever we classify enactment arguments—whether we view them as historical, or textual, or structural—we need to see that the written Constitution and the unwritten Constitution cohere to form a single system. While”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By

“All this was breathtakingly novel. In 1787, democratic self-government existed almost nowhere on earth.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“A second existential threat—slavery—was internal, subtler, and insidiously increasing. Human bondage, if not placed on a path of ultimate extinction, threatened to destroy the soul of the American republic. A closely related threat was regional polarization. As time passed, slavery shrank in the North and metastasized in the South. This divergence made it harder for the two regions to converse with each other, as the South increasingly came under the grip of pro-slavery extremists who disdained discourse and democracy and who would ultimately take up arms against both the Constitution and the American union that it embodied.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“When Madison and Jefferson opposed Hamilton, they also opposed Washington, who generally sided with Hamilton, and whom Hamilton served loyally. This is one factor that should weigh against Madison’s and Jefferson’s constitutional claims circa 1791–1797. Several other factors also weigh against Madison’s and Jefferson’s views in this time period. The duo themselves in later years quietly slinked away from some of their most outlandish claims; judges of all stripes, including men they themselves placed on the Court, repeatedly rejected many of their views; and later generations of judges have generally followed suit.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“The residents of Georgetown, MA, expressed their contempt in a particularly witty way reminiscent of Otis: 'Rejected... Because... a man being born in Africa (or) India or ancient American, or even being much sun burnt deprived him of having a Vote of Representative.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Even more telling was the Judicial Article’s silence on issues of judicial apportionment. The precise apportionment rules for the House, Senate, and presidential electors appeared prominently in the Legislative and Executive Articles. These rules reflected weeks of intense debate and compromise at Philadelphia and generated extensive discussion during the ratification process. Yet the Judicial Article said absolutely nothing about how the large and small states, Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, and so on, were to be balanced on the Supreme Court. This gaping silence suggests that the Founding generation envisioned the Court chiefly as an organ enforcing federal statutes and ensuring state compliance with federal norms. Just as it made sense to give the political branches wide discretion to shape the postal service, treasury department, or any other federal agency carrying out congressional policy, so, too, it made sense to allow Congress and the president to contour the federal judiciary as they saw fit.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“The solution was nonviolent. Unlike the soldiers at the Massacre, the Sons killed no one. Unlike the mob at Hutchinson’s house, the Sons did not come close to killing anyone. The solution was proportionate. The Sons destroyed no more property than necessary. They tossed overboard and thus ruined approximately 340 chests of East India tea, valued at about 9,700 pounds sterling. But no books or papers were disturbed or destroyed, as had happened at Hutchinson’s mansion. The three tea-laden ships involved in the episode were unharmed, and their non-tea cargo was untouched. The Sons made a point of sweeping the decks. The patriots would have preferred simply to scare the ships off, but Governor Hutchinson (no longer merely acting governor as he had been at the Massacre) had forbidden the ships to leave the harbor, and for technical customs-law reasons the clock was ticking down fast.84 The solution was public spirited and non-piratic. The Sons dumped the tea to make a legal and political point. They did not plunder or pilfer for their own private use—again, unlike the mob at Hutchinson’s mansion, where looters disgraced the patriot cause. The Sons and their allies in the press proudly stressed this fact: “A watch… was stationed to prevent embezzlement, and not a single ounce of Tea was suffered to be purloined by the populace.”85 The solution was conversation-starting and attention-grabbing, designed to win publicity across America and also in London, to counter the ministry’s low-tax-now gambit that threatened high taxes later. (What comes down must go up, thought the Sons.) Like Revere’s eye-catching cartoons, Otis’s ear-grabbing slogans, Pitt’s soaring speeches, and Barré’s fetching phraseology, the Sons’ performance art was part of an emerging democratic culture that rewarded those able to capture the attention and woo the hearts of the many. The solution was playful, satiric, and stylish—worthy of Hogarth himself. London snobs had treated their colonial cousins as if they were uncivilized aborigines, rather than proper New World Englishmen entitled to all the rights of proper Old World Englishmen. Well, the Sons replied, winkingly, don’t blame us for the destruction of tea. Blame the Indians, against whom your soldiers are allegedly protecting us! The Sons may also have relished the performance pun that New World “Indians” were thwarting Britain’s East India monopoly. In a note the following day to James Warren (brother-in-law of James Otis Jr.), John Adams gave the Sons’ theatrical performance a rave review: “This is the grandest Event which has ever yet happened Since the Controversy with Britain opened! The Sublimity of it charms me!”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“was not one to hold back, and he genuinely loved conversing with his extraordinarily clever and articulate spouse, who in much of their back-and-forth wore the affectionate nickname Portia.63”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Indeed, these lenses and compasses are perhaps the most important components of America’s unwritten Constitution, and they form the organizational spine of this book. Fair”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By

“Improved reporting practices have enabled the Court to get its message out, and quickly. Nowadays, in any given case a majority of justices ordinarily sign on to a single “Opinion of the Court,” an opinion widely viewed as the last word on the Constitution’s meaning. Meanwhile, a partisan and crumbly Congress has often found it hard to speak with one voice, and presidents have come to be seen as party politicians rather than impartial magistrates.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography

“While he greatly admired the orderliness of lower Manhattan’s layout and the grandeur of its best buildings, he found its inhabitants overbearing: “With all the Opulence and Splendor of this City, there is… no Conversation that is agreeable. There is no Modesty—No Attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a Question, before you can utter 3 Words of your Answer, they will break out upon you, again—and talk away.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840