The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Fully Revised Second Edition

The reader is told in the introduction that The Heritage Guide to the U.S. Constitution was written to “provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the Framers and as applied in contemporary law” that will be “accessible and helpful for informed citizens and students of the Constitution generally.” The Guide is an ambitious effort that employed nearly 100 prominent and accomplished constitutional scholars to write in-depth essays about every facet of the U.S. Constitution. While it is amazingly informative, its fault lies in its overly substantial deference to the national government, which does not reflect the true nature of our founding document's ratification.The preface to the Guide explains that it utilized three sources: the records and debates of the constitutional convention, The Federalist Papers, and Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. While the first two sources are vitally important, the third was published almost 30 years after the ratification. Not only is it not legally binding whatsoever, but it was also biased in favor of a nationalist vision. The story, along with Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Daniel Webster, John Marshal,l and eventually Abraham Lincoln, all twisted the details of the ratification to argue for a nationalist and even a monarchist vision of a much stronger central government than what was actually created at the ratification.Noted legal scholar of the day and prominent Jeffersonian republican Abel P. Upshur actually wrote an entire book to refute what he felt were misconceptions spread by Story’s Commentaries. Upshur criticized Story for construing the Constitution from the small Federalist faction's perspective at the convention and ignoring the ratification's true historical nature. Upshur argued that doing so betrays the very Constitution itself and enables a runaway central government to trample the sovereignty of the states as well as the individual rights of American citizens.In Upshur’s book A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of our Federal Government, he wrote the “principle that ours is a consolidated government of all the people of the United States, and not a confederation of sovereign states must necessarily render it little less than omnipotent. That principle, carried out to its legitimate results, will assuredly render the federal government the strongest in the world… Upon the theory that it possesses all the powers of the government, there is nothing to check, nothing to control it.”Upshur even hypothesized what would happen under this scenario where the states had no recourse but to do as the federal government dictated. “Let it be supposed that a certain number of States, containing a majority of the people of all the States, should find it to their interest to pass laws oppressive to the minority, and violating their rights as secured by the Constitution. What redress is there upon the principles of Judge Story? Is it to be found in the federal tribunals? They are themselves a part of the oppressing government and are, therefore, not impartial judges of the powers of that government…. Under such a system as this, it is a cruel mockery to talk about the rights of the minority. If they possess rights, they have no means to vindicate them…. This is the despotism of the worst sort, in a system like ours.”Upshur’s criticisms still ring true today, where an all-powerful centralized super-state has replaced the constitutional republic of old. This expansive government growth only occurred because centralizers similar to Story successfully changed the Constitution from restraining federal power to being a source of unlimited national power. A truly Jeffersonian republican analysis of the Constitution, which was part of this nation’s fabric up through the 18th century, would take into account the subjective understanding of the ratifiers, which the public debates can infer at the different state conventions as well as assurances as to the nature of the proposed central government made by advocates of ratification. This analysis always concludes that the Constitution created a minimal central government entrusted only with specifically enumerated powers. The Guide’s failure to view the Constitution from this perspective is painfully noticeable regarding its essay on the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, which is much broader than what was originally authorized.Still, most of the scholarly research in the book is extremely well done and certainly worth reading. It concisely makes the following astute and correct assertions: The General Welfare clause is “negative, not positive — a limitation on power, not a grant of power”; the spending clause of Article I is limited “only to further ends specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution,” and the “Interstate Commerce” clause applied only to the free commerce of goods between the states rather than the open-ended grant of legislative power to Congress that it has been held out to be since the New Deal.

Well organized.

This book is very uneven in how thoroughly and objectively it provides the historical context for a statement or amendment.For example, there are 25 pages of background on the first amendment (pp. 393-418), and there are 4 pages of background on the second amendment (pp. 418-422).In the section on the Second Amendment, the author writes about the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The author discusses the 5-4 majority adopted by the court, and says the court was influenced by "revisionist" commentators, who said the original meaning of the Second Amendment included protection of individuals to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense (p. 421).Why does he label the commentators with the word "revisionist"? Clearly, he does not think the "individual self defense" provision was intended by the writers at the time.So, what writers in the 1700s and 1800s does he quote to provide the historical context? (The Second Amendment was added in 1791.) He provides one quote, from James Madison, from The Federalist No. 46. Everything else in the section is interpretation from the section's modern author.What other early sources talk about the right to bear arms? Richard Henry Lee (an anti-Federalist), in Letters from the Federal Farmer 53; Tench Coxe (a Federalist) discussed the topic in the February 1788 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette (prior to the Constitution's amendments), and whose views were reinforced by Tench Coxe himself a year later in support of the Bill of Rights; George Tucker in the 1803 edition of Blackstone's Commentaries (writing for England, but commenting on the Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution); William Rawle's 1825 book A View of the Constitution of the United States of America; Joseph Story's 1833 book, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.The section on the Second Amendment in this book quoted NONE of these sources. Most anti-Second Amendment writers omit quotations from these early sources, and instead maintain that pro-Second Amendment "revisionist" commentators have misconstrued authorial intent.In summary, this book is a good starting point, and has sections in it that are thorough and balanced. However, as with all books claiming to provide historical context, some sections are little more than regurgitated pabulum from a specific ideologic perspective.

Great for your kids and grandkids also.

Beautifully written and presented. What incredibly wise and Godly men our forefathers were! We cannot let our beautiful country be destroyed from the bottom up! God help us!

It's a hefty book filled with history of our country's basic tenets and the law of the land. You'll learn what we are doing right and what we have strayed afield from. How we are turning this into a nation of slaves to the government elite unless we got back on the right path; which a majority of Americans believe we have failed to follow; including the left, right, and middle.

I decided to buy this book because I am very interested in the Constitution and the meaning our founding fathers had when writing it, instead of the bastardized version that most people adhere to these days. I also specifically bought it to see what they had to say about Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 and I am very disappointed at how little they actually went in to explaining that specific part. That is the section that talks about the federal government not being able to own vast swaths of land throughout the states unless they buy it from the state, with that state legislature's approval, and then they can only use it for very specific things...which are mostly military in nature. I was really hoping that the authors of this book would have delved into some of the case law going back into the late 1700's that talks about that very subject. Hopefully there will be a revision soon. I'm still very happy to have this book for a reference guide. I just hope the other sections are more fully explained.

This should be required reading in every high school in the US. Those of us who did not get a high quality civics or constitution course should buy it and study it.