How to Wake the Constitution’s Sleeping Giant

How Originalism Killed the Constitution

In the October issue, Jill Lepore explained how a radical legal philosophy has undermined the process of constitutional evolution.

Jill Lepore’s stellar cover story rightly described the Constitution’s amendment provision as a “sleeping giant.” The process is indeed in sound slumber today, but history suggests that it will wake up. Amendments, history shows, come in cycles. The political factors that trigger those cycles always differ. But what...