Making Amends, Part 1 (LAW-CONST1)

Marbury v. Madison and the Louisiana Purchase both happened in 1803. Akhil Reed Amar argues the purchase was by far the more consequential constitutional decision, and explains why.

This lecture marks the turn from the original Constitution to its amendments. Amar notes a structural fact with real consequences: unlike most state constitutions, which absorb amendments into the text, the federal document appends them in chronological order, so each generation's contribution stays legible. He uses that to frame the Constitution as an intergenerational project rather than a founders' achievement, and traces the sequence: a colonial revolution organized around stated principles that did not end in a bloodbath or a strongman, state constitutions as the first laboratory, a continental ratification, the acquisition of Louisiana, the anti-colonial commitment to admit territories as equal states, and the ending of slavery. He closes on the twentieth century, arguing that an America still committed to racial hierarchy could not have stood against Nazism as it did, and on how much of the promise was only redeemed much later.