Constitutional Conversation: A New Lens on America’s Best Masterpiece: Bruce I. Petrie (English Edition)

This book originated for undergraduate students in a course I teach called Constitutional Conversation. It’s not a survey of legal history or a case book of law. It’s for general readers who want to talk about the Constitution in a more familiar and thoughtful way with friends, family, colleagues, classmates and others. It’s also for the reader who looks at the daily headlines, the vivid images of division and violence and wonders: “What can I do?” One response is we can each get to know our Constitution, maybe for the first time. We can connect to its ideas and ideals and inform our conversation with its first principles as America’s best masterpiece. In that way, each of us and together as We the People can become more active participants in a reinvigorated intelligence of citizenship. That necessary conversation of We the People will make the difference between enlightened popular sovereignty and some lesser form of civic life and governance.