Civics: The Living Constitution: What is legal? What is unconstitutional?

The clash of competing views over whether America’s practice has been faithful to the written Constitution is the great theme of US constitutional history. For over 200 years, charges and countercharges have been flung by contending parties over whether one side or the other has violated the Constitution. The debate started almost immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, with two of the document’s greatest framers and defenders—James Madison and Alexander Hamilton—taking drastically different positions concerning the scope of the government’s powers under the new Constitution. The debate over the Constitution’s proper interpretation has raged throughout American history and been central to some of the nation’s defining events: from the horrors of race slavery, the Dred Scott case, and the Civil War; to Jim Crow, segregation, and the First World War; through the Great Depression and the New Deal to World War II; to modern battles over racial discrimination, discrimination, abortion, presidential war powers, and dozens of other issues.

44 pages; 13,289 words; images