Elizabeth Jo

And I'm Elizabeth Jo.

And just importantly, that when you say that, you mean for those listeners who might not understand when the Supreme Court, for instance, I think you're saying makes a new interpretation of the Constitution.

We can consider that an amendment as well, even though the Supreme Court may not say that explicitly.

But the core of your book is actually about the formal part, the formal aspect of amending the Constitution.

So could you talk through a little bit about Article 5, the process, why it was included and why does it say specifically what it does?

And in fact, there are two different routes, actually, right?

So maybe you could talk to us about that and which one became the de facto route.

It didn't work.

And so the one that we have now, of course, has been amended, you know, 27 times.

But I'm struck that your book is not entitled The Successful 27.

It's actually a book about a lot of failures, right?

And so many failures, so many interesting failures, failed amendments.

So what can we learn from this history of things that didn't happen or not part of the official record?

That's kind of how I roll.

Well, but even the amendment process itself, I mean, maybe you could talk about these two polar opposites in your book.

One is like, let's have an amendment.

An example would be like right after Brown versus Board in 1954.

Let's have an amendment to make it easier to change the Constitution.

And at the other end of the scale, you have the Corwin Amendment right before the Civil War.

Let's make sure that we keep slavery and we make sure that that can never, ever be amended ever again.