We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
What Is the Constitution?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2022
Americans refer to “the Constitution” easily and often. What exactly they mean is not so clear much of the time.
The term is, of course, short for “The Constitution of the United States of America,” which is the title of a document – really, a collection of documents, the original text and the amendments. In some sense, Americans always have the document in the back of their minds when they invoke its title. In ceremonial contexts, and when politicians want to belabor their opponents about the latter’s supposed perfidy, “the Constitution” brings up the image of the parchment document housed in the National Archives, with “We the People” in large flowing script at the beginning and George Washington’s signature leading the rest at the end; what the document actually says between heading and signatures is often immaterial.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
