A Bellicose Founding Charter: The U.S. Constitution and Providing for the 'Common Defence'-A Book Review of Akhil Reed Amar: The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 (Basic Books, New York, 2021)

• Author: Lieutenant Colonel Daniel E. Schoeni
• Position: Brigham Young University, B.A. 2000; University of Iowa, M.A./J.D. 2003; George Washington University, LL.M. 2014; University of Nottingham, Ph.D. 2022
• Pages: 509-519

BOOK REVIEW

A Bellicose Founding Charter: The U.S. Constitution

and Providing for the “Common Defence”—A Book

Review of Akhil Reed Amar: The Words That

Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation,

1760–1840 (Basic Books, New York, 2021)

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel E. Schoeni*

INTRODUCTION

Akhil Reed Amar’s magisterial The Words that Made Us: America’s

Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840, breaks new ground, delivering an origi-

nal account of the historical foundations of the U.S. Constitution.

1

Its methodol-

ogy is fresh, analysis rigorous, and many of its conclusions startling.

2

This

volume should be required reading not only for legal scholars, practitioners, and

jurists but also non-lawyers, who would find an accessible civics lesson on the

Founding; in a nation divided like few times in its history,

3

this could not have

come at a better time.

4

It tells a story that all of us should come to know better.

5

* Brigham Young University, B.A. 2000; University of Iowa, M.A./J.D. 2003; George Washington

University, LL.M. 2014; University of Nottingham, Ph.D. 2022. Dan clerked for Justice Jerry Larson of

the Iowa Supreme Court, has been an Air Force judge advocate since 2004, and is an adjunct in the

government procurement program at George Washington University Law School. The views expressed

here do not reflect an official position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or

any other U.S. government agency. © 2023, Daniel E. Schoeni.

1. AKHIL REED AMAR, THE WORDS THAT MADE US: AMERICA’S CONSTITUTIONAL CONVERSATION,

1760–1840 (2021) [hereinafter WORDS THAT MADE US].

2. Consider just two examples. Who was the author of the Declaration of Independence? According

to Amar, Thomas Jefferson isn’t the correct answer. Id. at 126–27. Who was the “father” of the

Constitution? If your answer was James Madison, wrong again. Id. at 194–96, 202–17.

3. See, e.g., A House Divided: The Splintering of America, ECONOMIST, Sept. 3, 2022, at 16, 19

(citing DAVID FRENCH, DIVIDED WE FALL: AMERICA’S SECESSION THREAT AND HOW TO RESTORE OUR

NATION (2020)) (describing the nation’s worrisome divide into two antithetical political camps).

4. American Presidents take an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend, the Constitution of the United

States,” U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 8, and Amar urges that a better understanding of that oath is essential:

For this system to work, an oath-taking president – and We Americans who pick that oath-taking

president – must understand the basic outlines of our Constitution. What does it say and why does it

say that? How has it been implemented over the years by prior presidents and other leading govern-

ment actors? Which of our past presidents did this job well, and which did not? These and related

civics questions form the spine of this book. Thus, this is a book for my fellow citizens.

WORDS THAT MADE US, supra note 1, at 677 (emphasis added).

5. Indeed, Amar has succeeded in his goal to create a “handy” one-volume history of the Revolution,

the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, and the early republic. Id. at xii.

509