Jill Lepore

One, that it has to be written by a specially elected body, like a legislature can't write the Constitution because they'll just give themselves too much power.

So you have to have a special convention of people who are elected or delegated solely for the purpose of writing the Constitution.

So there has to be a convention so that the Constitution is popularly drafted.

Then the Constitution after it's drafted has to be sent to the people for their ratification.

They have to approve it.

It can't become a Constitution unless it's properly ratified.

And then the third idea that emerged as, you know, the third leg of the stool of what a written Constitution is in the United States is it has to be amendable by the people.

For the same reason that the legislature can't write it, right?

And that the people have to ratify it.

If you really believe that the people are sovereign, there is no king who is sovereign, we rule ourselves, then we should write fundamental law.

And if fundamental law needs to change, we should be able to change it.

So this is like the core of constitutionalism in the emerging United States.

And so those ideas are, you know, there's been a lot of experimentation, like some states adopted constitutions.

Without a convention, some states adopted constitutions with no amendment provision.

Some states adopted constitutions where the thing could be amended, but the legislature could be amended.

And they all kind of failed.

So there's a big fight in Massachusetts in 1779.

The state legislature writes a constitution and sends it to the towns for ratification.

And the people of Massachusetts are like, dudes, like, no, we're not going to ratify this.

Where's the convention?