ABSTRACT
To assess how well the Constitution works, it is first necessary to understand its purpose. With the Preamble's six objectives as a structuring device, supplemented by some empirical comparisons and metrics, this chapter makes the case for its overall success. Subsequent history expanded democracy, but opposition to power, and suspicion of government as its most dangerous embodiment, has remained the thematic core of American political thought. "Justice" is a slippery concept. For some, it is procedural: "equal treatment" or "equality before the law." The "general welfare" and hyper-individualism have coexisted since the republic's earliest days. Among others who agonized over atomization, Tocqueville wrote with concern about frontier America and rugged individualists who "owe nothing to any man." In terms of adaptation, the same foundation facilitated a transformative advance of equal rights, institutionalization of civil liberties, creation of a welfare state, and an international role unimaginable in 1787.
