A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen examines the <i>cultural</i> impact of the Constitution on the United States: the place of the Constitution in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time.<br /><br />Exploring what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), he shows that a glaring discrepancy exists between the recurrent declarations of reverence for our American 'Ark of the Covenant' and the fact that most of us neither know nor fully understand it.<br /><br />How did this gap between ideology and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and have been with us ever since.<br /><br />Finally, Kammen examines the critical response to Supreme Court decisions striking down various laws passed by Congress. How, he asks, can the current impulsed of many Americans, on the right and the left, to reduce the Court's powers be reconciled with our faith in the value of judicial review - generally considered to be the most distinctive American contribution to Western constitutionalism?<br /><br />"<i>With a mix of reverence and ignorance, Americans have fashioned a constitutional pattern of conflict within consensus. Kammen traces this pattern: initial ambiguity, slow emergence as a national symbol, conflict and the Civil War, etc., accelerating change after 1940. Throughout he emphasizes the role of the Supreme Court</i>."<br /> -- Library Journal