{"id":67217,"global_id":"townhallseattle.org?id=67217","global_id_lineage":["townhallseattle.org?id=67217"],"author":"5","status":"publish","date":"2025-07-20 21:43:27","date_utc":"2025-07-21 04:43:27","modified":"2025-09-26 09:25:02","modified_utc":"2025-09-26 16:25:02","url":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/event\/jill-lepore\/","rest_url":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/tribe\/events\/v1\/events\/67217","title":"Jill Lepore","description":"<p data-aura-rendered-by=\"3730:784;a\">The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world, but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in\u00a0<em>We the People<\/em>, the most original history of the Constitution in decades\u2014and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States,\u00a0<em>These Truths<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p data-aura-rendered-by=\"3730:784;a\">\u201cOne of the Constitution\u2019s founding purposes was to prevent change,\u201d Lepore writes. \u201cAnother was to allow for change without violence.\u201d Relying on the extraordinary database she has assembled at the Amendments Project, Lepore recounts centuries of attempts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to realize the promise of the Constitution. Yet nearly all those efforts have failed. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. More troubling, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without recourse to amendment, she argues, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential or judicial fiat.<\/p>\n<p data-aura-rendered-by=\"3730:784;a\">Challenging both the Supreme Court\u2019s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of \u201coriginalism,\u201d Lepore contends in this \u201cgripping and unfamiliar story of our own past\u201d that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly, deliberative, and democratic process.<\/p>\n<p data-aura-rendered-by=\"3730:784;a\">Lepore\u2019s remarkable history seeks, too, to rekindle a sense of constitutional possibility. 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