The agreement of “We, the people of the United States,” to ordain and establish an audacious document in the late 1780s hardly ended the constitutional conversation, for immediately thereafter the questions became whether and how to amend the new document and how to interpret and implement it. Americans repeatedly asked themselves who should lead this constitutional conversation and what should be the basic rules of conversational and constitutional engagement. The Constitution was a set of words. What did these words mean and how should they be read and made real? Would these words continue to work as the Revolutionaries who drafted and ratified them passed from the scene and gave way to a new generation of conversationalists?
—Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us (Preface: "The First Four Score," page xiii)