ABSTRACT
When it was devised and enacted, between 1787 and 1789, the U.S. Constitution was a true anomaly. Until that point, political systems throughout the world had generally just evolved over time, reacting to changing circumstances with little prior thought or planning. Indeed, the founding era of the United States was the first time in history that a group of national leaders, in this case delegates from the thirteen American states, took on the explicit challenge of codifying a new political structure to govern their country and writing it down in a single document. The framers fused abstract concepts such as the “consent of the governed” and “limited government” with pragmatic considerations about how to garner popular support in enough states to ensure ratification. To an extent unanticipated by the framers, the Constitution has endured with only fairly small textual changes for more than 220 years, making it the longest continuously functioning written constitution in the world.
