Melissa Murray

We live in a world where we act like the Supreme Court is the final word on our rights.

And I guess that's kind of true unless we take seriously the idea that we can be constitutional changemakers in our own right.

And in fact, there are people in our history who have done exactly that and have changed the Constitution and made it more responsive to we the people.

So...

This is not what I would have done on strict scrutiny.

So, you know, one of the things my editor and I talked about at length was whether this was going to be as forthright about my particular take on things as we are on strict scrutiny.

And we decided that maybe it was just better to sort of explain things, really focus on the history of certain things and do a kind of one group says this, one group does that.

In order to give people, of all stripes, the tools that they need to dive deeper, draw their own conclusions.

And I think that was probably the right choice.

I think there are certainly some places where my own views come into play in shaping the book.

Like, for example, one of the things that I felt very strongly about was being absolutely forthright about all of the ways in which slavery is literally organized.

all over the original Constitution, even though the document never says the word.

But there are all of these compromises, not just the Three-Fifths Compromise, but lots of different compromises about whether or not this is going to be a free nation or whether we're going to allow half the country to own people.

And that literally shapes this document.

It shapes some of the amendments that we have, and it certainly shapes the way this country tries to knit itself back together after the American Civil War.

So those are choices.

Well, let me say two things, one for the reader like you who doesn't have a law degree and maybe one for the reader like John Lovett who thinks he has a law degree.

And for you, John Favreau, I'm going to offer this origin story about the project itself.

So there was a time, you'll remember this time, when I was in these Twitter streets quite a lot.

And I really was.