Independence Hall

I started reading Akhil Amar's America's Constitution: A Biography in preparation for my weekend in Philadelphia for the 2010 Peter Jennings Project fellowship conference, Feb. 26 - 28. It was an obvious choice: a comprehensive, even-handed take on America's founding document written by one of the PJP faculty members.

Amar's book is subtle and gently profound, a welcome approach in this age of the pop-culture academic. He evokes far more "ah"s than "ah-hah"s, for instance, when, in his explication of the Second Amendment, he draws a comparison between militias and juries, both groups providing a check against government while still operating within a governmental system.

"Twelve private citizens who simply got together on their own to announce the guilt of a fellow citizen would not be a lawful jury, but a lynch mob. Similarly, self-selected clusters of private citizens who choose to own guns today are not a well-regulated militia of the people; they are gun clubs."Read more