Promoting Constitutional Education

My goal as an educator, writer and constitutional scholar has been a simple one: to find a place for the Constitution in the minds and hearts of the citizenry. Without a broader public understanding of the Constitution and deeper appreciation for the virtues and values of American Constitutionalism, there is little reason to believe that the nation’s founding document will long endure. Of the many challenges that our nation faces, two have central importance to the work and goals of The Alturas Institute: widespread civic illiteracy and general indifference to governmental disregard of constitutional principles.

The alarmingly high level of civic illiteracy in the United States represents a national security crisis. A national survey revealed that one in three native-born citizens fails the civic literacy test that immigrants are required to pass. Of the immigrants who take the test, 97.5 percent pass it. Only 25 percent of the American people can name the three branches of government. Seventy percent do not know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Nearly 60 percent of the citizenry cannot name a single Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court and 12 percent believe that the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to own a pet. Few can explain how the Constitution allocates power, defines the responsibilities of the three branches of government, protects the rights and liberties of the citizenry and, at all events, why constitutional government matters.

Civic illiteracy casts a dark and foreboding shadow over the future of our Democracy. A stalwart defender of the Constitution, the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), justly observed: “People revere the Constitution, yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow Senators.”

Civic illiteracy threatens our freedoms and renders us vulnerable to the abuse of power. An untutored public, lacking an understanding of the First Amendment cannot, for example, determine whether governmental acts have unconstitutionally infringed on protected speech or religious practices. An unwitting electorate, moreover, may not recognize presidential usurpation of the war power, if it does not know that Congress, alone, possesses the constitutional authority to initiate war and lesser military hostilities on behalf of the American people.

Unfamiliarity with the constitutional allocation of power deprives the people of the ability to hold government accountable, the very premise of the rule of law. Without knowledge of the Constitution and basic civics, including the enumeration of powers, separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines, the citizenry is more and more likely to acquiesce in the face of usurpation of power, since it lacks the tools necessary to question, critique and challenge governmental declarations and actions. As a consequence, citizens become less engaged in the politics of the republic and are made to suffer the imposition of policies, programs and laws to which they’ve given no meaningful consent.

The central premise and promise of the Declaration of Independence—governmental legitimacy hinges on the consent of the people—becomes an unattainable proposition for the American people. In that context, the sheet iron of the republic, made famous by Abraham Lincoln’s statement, “Government of the people, by the people and for the people,” becomes a hoax perpetrated on the people.

For many, the virtues of constitutional government are self-evident. The ratification of the Constitution (and subsequent amendments) represents an exercise in popular sovereignty, a declaration by the American people, to draw on the words and thoughts of James Iredell, a ratifier from North Carolina, and a member of the first session of the Supreme Court, that we are willing to be governed by a particular allocation of power and a particular division of responsibility, and no other. The American people, he explained, had not granted government a blank sheet of power, but rather had imposed limits on its authority.

Limited governmental authority, defined and confined within the four corners of the Constitution, would prevent government officials from trampling the rights and liberties of the people.

But too many Americans, in the name of partisan politics and party affiliation, are willing to ignore acts of usurpation and aggrandizement. Acts of indifference to violations of the Constitution on such grounds encourage imitation, which will melt the very chains of the Constitution, designed to limit governmental power. That is the road to Machiavellianism—the ends justify the means---the antithesis of Constitutionalism.

Instead of ignoring acts of aggrandizement and transgressions against our civil liberties, Americans should stand up and speak out against constitutional violations. As difficult as it may be, the maintenance of the Constitution requires Democrats and Republicans to criticize members of their own party. Party affiliation has its place in American politics, but party loyalty must be subordinate to constitutional principles.

By what means should citizens adjudge the parameters of power? The traditional methods of constitutional interpretation---application of the text, historical framing of the Constitution, and its structure—embraced by our founders and by most contemporary judges and scholars across the nation, will help by placing all readers at the same table, using the same constitutional language.

Acceptance of those cannons of interpretation won’t eliminate all disputes about the meaning of the Constitution, of course, but it has the advantage of promoting a shared platform for those who engage in discussion and debate about the supreme law of the land and the application of its provisions to current constitutional controversies. That’s far better than an arena in which contestants are talking past one another, using means and methods that find no common ground in our discussions.

The goal is to create in America a constitutional culture, in which citizens embody a constitutional conscience and constitutional consciousness.

The creation of a constitutional conscience will instill in the citizenry a sense of duty, an obligation, to hold government accountable to the terms of the Constitution. They will raise their voices and decry acts of usurpation and aggrandizement.

The development of constitutional consciousness would reflect among the public a growing understanding of what the Constitution permits and what it prohibits.

The rationale for a constitutional culture is found the words of Benjamin Franklin who, upon the occasion of the adjournment of the Constitutional Convention, was asked by a woman: “Tell us Dr. Franklin, what kind of a government have you given us?” Franklin replied, “a republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin’s challenge to Americans in 1787 remains the great challenge in our time. The defense of the rule of law and the Constitution requires an informed citizenry. The Alturas Institute is committed to that goal.