United States Constitution, Annotated [+]
Nov 14 2022
After half a dozen years I read over 2000 pages of the United States Constitution, Annotated (2014). This is the text of the Constitution and amendments with each section followed by a bunch of commentary with citations. The commentary is mostly Supreme Court cases that were based on the section and how that section was interpreted to apply and how the interpretations have changed over time.
It's interesting to see how such a relatively short document creates so much case law because the Constitution is mostly written in plain language which then allows a lot of interpretation. Sometimes the Supreme Court interprets the words based on what the writers were thinking, what the voters were thinking. Sometimes it's strict that way and sometimes the Supreme Court extrapolates with the intention behind those words, with how the people who wrote them might have interpreted their words a hundred or two hundred years later. And they are both fine ways of interpreting the Constitution.
There is another 800 pages listing all Federal laws struck down by the Supreme Court, then all State and local laws pre-empted by Federal laws or struck down by the Supreme Court, and finally all Supreme Court decisions overruled by later Supreme Court decisions.
The current Constitution Annotated is a very nice looking web site with lots of hyperlinks. For me it's a bit harder to navigate than reading a PDF which has citations at the bottom of each page (I like to see citations in-page because a lot of times citations have a bit of extra explanatory text). Still, I guess this version is better since it's a living document that is updated periodically.
Addendum: I did find a web site that has the PDF versions: Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. The last complete revision is 2017 with a 2020 supplement.
It's interesting to see how such a relatively short document creates so much case law because the Constitution is mostly written in plain language which then allows a lot of interpretation. Sometimes the Supreme Court interprets the words based on what the writers were thinking, what the voters were thinking. Sometimes it's strict that way and sometimes the Supreme Court extrapolates with the intention behind those words, with how the people who wrote them might have interpreted their words a hundred or two hundred years later. And they are both fine ways of interpreting the Constitution.
There is another 800 pages listing all Federal laws struck down by the Supreme Court, then all State and local laws pre-empted by Federal laws or struck down by the Supreme Court, and finally all Supreme Court decisions overruled by later Supreme Court decisions.
The current Constitution Annotated is a very nice looking web site with lots of hyperlinks. For me it's a bit harder to navigate than reading a PDF which has citations at the bottom of each page (I like to see citations in-page because a lot of times citations have a bit of extra explanatory text). Still, I guess this version is better since it's a living document that is updated periodically.
Addendum: I did find a web site that has the PDF versions: Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. The last complete revision is 2017 with a 2020 supplement.