When did the justices of the United States Supreme Court become the only people allowed to interpret the Constitution?

What would it mean to return the power to decide what the Constitution is to the people themselves?

This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick.

And I'm Mark Joseph Stern. Welcome to By the People, a series of podcast episodes and articles at Slate.com, where we hope to start a conversation that will carry through the summer into the

fall, the next Supreme Court term, the midterms, and beyond.

By the people is about whether the Constitution truly belongs to the American people.

And if it does, what would it take for us to act like it?

Think of it as part provocation, part toolkit.

Reclaiming the Constitution is something ordinary Americans can absolutely do and certainly have done in the past.

That reclamation can take the form of amendments, petitioning, and structural reform.

But as you'll hear in this series, it can start with something as easy as writing a letter.

In this first episode, we're exploring popular constitutionalism, a transformational ideal,

but one that is also deeply rooted in American history and tradition.

Dahlia is going to talk to someone whose groundbreaking work examined America's turn toward judicial supremacy and exposed the very recent amnesia about how

constitutional meaning was made and enforced for quite literally centuries. But first, we wanted to

talk a bit about the genesis of this project and why we're

hoping you'll come on this journey with us. And I'll start with a question for you, Dahlia.

You've been mulling this series for a while. When did you start seriously thinking about who

exactly gets to decide what the Constitution means? The truth, Mark, is we've been dancing around this thing among ourselves on this show.

You and I've been talking about it.

And we've been short-handing it in-house at Slate as Pop-Con for maybe three years a little bit more.

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