In 1787, delegates from the newly independent United States – lawyers, governors, statesmen, and revolutionary patriots – met in Philadelphia to draft a constitution. Some 225 years later, that constitution stands as the world’s oldest continuously functioning instrument of government and arguably the most important and imitated body of law in modern history.

This newly revised collection of articles first appeared in The World & I on the occasion of the U.S. Constitution’s bicentennial in 1987. In it noted legal scholars and historians explore (1) the historical context of the framing; (2) the principles inherent in the Constitution that have enabled it to govern a country that has undergone inconceivable economic, geographic, and technological expansion; and (3) the continuing tension between the notion of rights guaranteed and duties of citizenship that have been a current in the nation’s history.