Ultimate Enforcers

Democratic constitutions are social contracts. And sometimes, what’s on the page is more stunning than what comes to life. Mila Versteeg says that citizens are the ultimate constitutional enforcers.They have to make it expensive for a government to break the social contract.

Riddle me this: What’s the first thing that a K-12 principal does in the morning? They decide which law to break! Paul Manna (William & Mary) says that it’s not because they’re lawless rebels. It’s because the 14,000 school districts across the United States have state laws, federal laws and local district policy telling them to do things that often contradict. So the question is: who should be making decisions about what happens in schools?

The Reconstruction Era amendments tried to expand the concept of We the People. Did they really work? Wayne Moore says that that promise was never fully realized, and that’s the nature of constitutions.