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Fixers and Framers: Reconsidering the Sources and Meaning of the American Founding
Review products
Mary SarahBilder, Madison's Hand: Revisiting the Constitutional Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)
JonathanGienapp, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2018)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2020
Extract
In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Woody Holton recounts how he introduces his students to the framing of the US Constitution by playing a game. Dividing the blackboard into three sections, he invites his students to shout out their favorite clauses of the Constitution. Holton enters the clauses in the columns and asks his students to label them. Clauses like freedom of religion and speech, freedom from illegal search and seizure, and the right to bear arms end up in the third column, which the students soon recognize as the Bill of Rights. In the first column are clauses taken over from the Articles of Confederation. The second column, which typically ends up with the single entry of “checks and balances,” is the Constitution without amendments. Students struggle to label the first and second columns correctly. When they finally do, they are struck by the fact that the most popular clauses of the Constitution are not in the original document.
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References
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