REVIEW: The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Fully Revised Third Edition by Josh Blackman, John Malcolm, et al.
There's a familiar lament among constitutionalists—one heard at law schools, in courtrooms, and across think tank hallways—that most Americans know next to nothing about the nation's founding document. Ask a random college graduate about the Emoluments Clause or the Compact Clause and you'll get a blank stare. Yet even among lawyers and judges, constitutional knowledge is often shallow, piecemeal, or warped by ideology.
What's been missing is a single, reliable, readable, and comprehensive reference work that explains what the Constitution actually says, what its words meant to those who wrote and ratified them, and how those meanings have been interpreted over time.
Enter The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, now in its third edition and more indispensable than ever. Originally published in 2005, with an updated edition in 2014, this volume has long been a mainstay for those of us who care about constitutional text, structure, and history. But the new edition isn't just an update. It's a major expansion and refinement, reflecting nearly a decade of scholarship, jurisprudence, and debate.
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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.
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