The Constitution Was Intended To Be Amended

Talking Feds

Harry Litman

News, Politics, Government

4.8 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the latest conversation in the Talking San Diego series, Harry sits down with Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore in front of a live San Diego audience to discuss Lepore’s important new book, “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution.” The book contains revelations about the importance to the Framers of the Amendment process, which Lepore argues has become a dead letter since the failure of the proposed Equal RIghts Amendment. In its stead various generations of Americans have looked to either political events or, more recently, the U.S. Supreme Court, to announce fundamental changes in our charter document, with significant consequences for the democracy In her book, as in her conversation with Harry, Lepore challenges the Supreme Court’s dominant doctrine of originalism; and she rallies Americans to be able to become more personally involved in repairing fundamental problems with the Constitution. The book was released for purchase Tuesday, September 16. This event was made possible by the generous support of the Prebys Foundation, which made it possible for local high school teachers and students to attend free of charge; by KPBS who have their own deep dive series on the American founding coming out in November in the form of a new Ken Burns series; and by Warwicks, our bookselling partners. You can read more about Jill’s book in the Atlantic and the New York Times. Talk to you later Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep-dive discussions with national figures
0:12.3	about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives.
0:19.9	I'm your host, Harry Littman.
0:22.3	We are weekly, even daily, absorbing what feels like real shocks to the Constitution and the rule
0:30.3	of law that impel us to consider, as we don't, day to day, the charter's role in our lives and reflect soberly on its potential limits to solve all that may ail us.
0:45.3	So we've the privilege today of taking up these perennial questions through the vantage point of a substantial new work by really one of our leading historians of the
0:57.9	Constitution and by new, I mean spanking new, not even officially published for another week.
1:06.3	People are going to be reading about it all over the country. It's going to be the cover story in the Atlantic, and the author will be on all the sort of
1:16.7	official media tours, but we have it for you today, and you have it here signed.
1:24.0	But I think of this conversation as an ideal platform to think about the distance between the Constitution as it governs us now today and the Constitution, as it was written in a particular year, by particular people whom we venerate, but who put their stockings and buckled shoes on one at a time.
1:49.0	So it invites scrutiny both of the state of the Union when it was established,
1:54.6	and also the question whether it's been able to keep step with the highest ambitions of a changing society.
2:03.4	The book, of course, is We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution, and its author,
2:12.2	I'm very pleased to welcome now the great Jill Lippoor.
2:17.1	Jill, could you come out, please?
2:18.3	You'll have to sit through a couple in Komi out, but Jill is the David Woods Kemper 41 professor of American
2:37.4	history at Harvard University and a professor of law at the law school, a full joined appointment,
2:44.3	and a staff writer at the New Yorker, where many of us have become familiar with her work.
2:53.0	Even those titles, I think,
2:59.6	understate her reign. She writes about American history, law, literature, civil society, and politics. Among her many, many awards are the American History Book Prize for her work history, the secret history of Wonder Woman.
3:12.7	She's been elected to the American Philosophical Society.
3:17.5	In 2021, she won the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.
	...

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