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[BLANK_AUDIO]
Welcome back.
I've begun most of the lectures in
this MOOC series with those words, welcome back.
And I say them now and, and it's a
little bit bittersweet because I think this is the
last time I will be able to say those
words to you, because this is our final concluding lecture.
And in this lecture, I'd like to do several things.
I'd like to thank you, I'd like to remind you,
I'd like to advise you and I'd like to challenge you.
So, first, my thank you, is
if, if you've made it this far, you've gone through an awful lot,
we've many, many hours of of this MOOC
series, this massive open on-line course, series.
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There are no required texts, there's no
tuition, no property qualifications, as it were.
But at another level, it's of course a very expensive course.
Because your time is valuable, it's precious.
It's the most precious thing to you and you've chosen to spend a lot of that time
to be part of this experience and, and I personally am very grateful to you.
And, and I actually think that your,
your fellow citizens are, and should be grateful.
The constitutional project does not work
unless every, in every generations, thousands,
millions frankly, of Americans buy into the project and participate in it.
They, they have to show up to vote.
To serve on juries when called to, to do
public service when, when summoned by their fellow citizens.
To pay their taxes and ultimately their obligation in, involves not merely
speaking but, but listening, not just freedom of speech but a duty to listen.
Not just voting but deliberating and thinking, learning,
understanding our constitutional system, and that does take effort.
And that's the effort that you've all put into
this course, and so again, I thank you for that.
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It's organized around two books, America's Constitution: A Biography,
and America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By.
And just by way of reminder, here's what we did.
We started with a very careful and comprehensive
tour through this tourist text, the written constitution.
And I hope we learned several things, from,
from that tool, which aimed to be comprehensive.
We saw how well organized the text was, it begins with this idea
of popular sovereignty, we the people, then
it talks about the legislature, article one
the executive, article two the judicial, article three the states, article four the
constitutional supremacy principals of of amendment and
ordainment in articles five, six, and seven.
So its we saw the, the general organization of, of the thing as a whole.
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organization story to a chronological story, through
the Bill of Rights, and then the
Reconstruction Amendments adopted after the Civil War.
The Progressive Era Amendments in the 19 teens.
The 1960s amendments kind of a second reconstruction constitutionally ending
poll-tax disfranchisement, opening up the vote still further to, to young adults.
So that was the first book a, a guided tour of the, and I hope
a comprehensive one of the written constitution,
seeing its organization and its inter-generational chronological, flow.
And then, in the second half of the course,
we focused on the fact that the constitution is more.
Our constitutional culture, our constitutional experience,
constitutional law goes beyond this terse text.
It encompass it, to be sure.
We would never want to lose a connection to the written constitution.
But we talked about things beyond the written constitution.
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Let me summarize them.
There's the terse text, the written constitution.
That's one way in which we talk about a constitution.
There are unwritten principles of, of higher law, limiting government
that are not all textual specified but are still part of our constitutional system.
Many of these unwritten rules and principles are judicially enforceable.
Others, even though they're not in the text explicitly, others may not be
judiciously enforceable, but they still are
binding in legal conscience upon non-judicial actors.
And 225 years ago when the constitution
is being launched, that idea, the constitution has
higher principles that are really binding even if not set forth in the terse text.
That idea would have been very
recognizable, by both Americans and Englishmen.
Englishmen, of course, don't have, Britons don't have a written constitution in
this way, but they do have unwritten principles that are understood to bind.
Sometimes judicially, other times extra judicially outside the judiciary.
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A third idea of a constitution.
A constitution are, is how the government,
how the society, the polity is constituted.
The procedures and protocols and processes by
which the government is organized and, and constituted.
That, idea, as well, would have been a well-understood by the
British because that is the British
constitution, how the government is organized.
We pave, we paid particular attention to some of the features, of some of the
institutional features, and constitutive features
of our system that a somehow entrenched, made difficult to change.
Some of these entrenchments are highly formal and legal,
even if not textually specified, they're enforceable in court.
Principles of separation of powers and federalism that a court might
enforce against ordinary legislative change
even though they're not written down.
So some of these are judicially enforceable, others
of them might operate, not so much by court order but
the more informal mechanisms of entrenchment, for example America's
two party system is a practical matter we have duopoly.
They're two big parties, that's part of our basic system of government.
And that maybe not judicially forced all the time,
but it's a fundamental and entrenched feature of the constitution.
So these first three ideas of that constitution is,
I think would have been well understood at the founding.
The terse test unwritten rules and, and principles of
higher law that constrain, and the way in which
the government is basically organized and constituted the basical,
the basic institutional procedures and protocols and principles and processes.
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Now to those three elements I've encouraged us to think about a fourth.
The constitution also encompasses the tools and techniques by
which we make constitutional arguments, and read the constitution.
This doesn't come, this little document here doesn't come with a
specific and comprehensive set of rules about how its to be interpreted.
These rules are themselves part of America's constitutional system,
and and so what I hope we, we we've seen through the course is how these different
elements that terse text, the unwritten,
higher law principles, the organization of the
system as a whole, and the tools
and techniques of interpretation all fit together.
because, even though the first half focused more on the terse text and
the second half went beyond it, I hope in the second half we always kept the text in
mind, because the text is connected to the implicit principles, the
enacting and ordaining and amending deeds, the lived constitutional
experiences the landmark cases, the iconic
symbols of, of national unity, the basic structures and institutions of
government power, the state constitutional counterparts.
The written constitution is intermittently intertwined with all
of those other elements of our constitutional culture.
And so, I hope you see that even though we've had to go beyond the
terse text, we've always tried to, to connect to it and keep it in mind.
So that was by way of reminder.
I started, with, I will thank you and I want to
remind you, two things left to advise you and to challenge you.
On advice you might say, okay, well, professor, reaching the end of this
experience, what next if we're interested in learning more, what should we do?
Well, one thing of course it's not at all
a course requirement I hope it hasn't been but
if you do want to have a, get a
lot more detailed understanding of the constitution in general
and, and of these lectures in particular feel free
to go to a local library or a local
bookstore or go online and get copies of America's
Constitution: A Biography or America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and
Principles We Live By.
These are, not expensive textbooks.
You can get a used copy on Amazon for, I think,
maybe 5 or $6, for the first book which is in paperback.
And the second one isn't in paperback yet, but I hope
it will be soon, and I think is $20 on Amazon.
And again remind, to remind you bookstores have them, but so do libraries.
So you do, you do not need to, to pay a penny in
order to experience the, the more detailed
information that you'll find in those books.
And you say okay, well professor, now even after I've read those books, what next?
Well, each of those books, and they're pretty hefty here, each
is about 500 pages of, of text, has 100 pages of end
notes that have all sorts of references to other books and
articles that you might read, depending on what's of interest to you.
I tried to write these to guide, the
reader and, to other, I think, interesting accounts.
And, and if you wanted one recommendation right now, you're not going to
be surprised, but you, that you can probably predict what I'm going to
say if you, the first thing probably to, to, to read in
addition to these books that I, I'd be delighted if you experienced.
The first thing of course is the Federalists Papers.
The which are again they're available actually online, for free,
you can get paperback copy for five or six bucks.
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All libraries have them, most book stores have them.
And if you've read the books you've read my
two books, and you've looked at the end notes,
and you've read the Federalist Papers, and you still
want more, just Google my name, email me, tell me
what you've read, tell me what you liked about
what you read, tell me what you didn't like,
and I'll be happy to give you more reading
suggestions depending on your particular tastes and interests So there
are, there's a vast literature out there and depending on
your interests, you can go in all sorts of different directions
and I have tried to give you literally hundreds of
suggestions, reading suggestions, in the end notes, to these two books.
Okay, so I thanked you, and I reminded you, and I've
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Remember how we began this, course.
We talked about how the constitution's preamble.
We the People of the United States.
And remember, I'm going to have to say something about this image here cause
I, I always do that, that's part of the course, so I will.
And this is the image that we started with.
But this preamble, we the people of the United
States, dot dot dot, do ordain and establish this constitution.
That was an epically democratic deed.
It was the hinge of human history.
It changed everything.
Never had so many people gotten together to
decide how they and their posterity would be governed.
The world would never be the same.
And it was also, a massive corporate merger of sorts.
13 different colonies forming one genuinely united system.
It was nothing less, really than world government for the new world.
Democratic world government for a new world
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kind of an island continent separated from
the old world and and the, the question
is whether that makes sense today, that vision
because here are two things that are, two big fundamental things that have changed.
The rest of the world is democratic in a way that it wasn't before.
Much of it is.
At the time of the founding there were only
a couple of, of self-governing societies outside the New World.
Switzerland and Great Britain.
Now, half the planet is democratic.
On the con, on the model of the American Constitution, written constitutions, free
elections, free speech, religious tolerance a peaceful
transfers of powers between competing political parties.
For example, a billion people in India, that's where my parents
came from, are now self governing on the American constitutional model.
And so, so, the rest of the world is much more American than before.
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But the world has changed and and the question is
whether constitutional thinking needs to, to change along side it.
When the constitution was being proposed, it was a, as
I said, it was as if there was world government.
And, and there's nothing, and, and it was designed to protect us
against the British, the constitution was
as a continental defense system, common defense.
We the people of the United States in order to,
dot, dot, dot, provide for the common defense, and it
was about protecting us against the Brits, and the Spanish,
and the French and, and, and others who would tyrannize.
But, and today if I said well we need to think about, your
generation needs to think seriously about world government on the democratic scale.
We haven't talked about that very much in this course.
But, but the challenge is for you to begin to think about that.
You might say, well, you know, there's, you know, what do you mean professor?
Do you mean we have to think seriously about whether we should
ever have a legislature, elected legislature of the world that could actual
pass laws, and impose taxes, and have an army, and, and you
say, there's nothing imaginable that would make me ever vote for that professor.
You might pause and say, well, unless the Martians came.
And if the Martians were coming say, well, you know, maybe
we have our disagreements with the Chinese, or, or the, the Russians.
But, but they are homo sapiens, so we're in.
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But the question is today whether really actually
is it really true that the Martians aren't coming?
Think about all the things that maybe
require, not just continental coordination, but, global coordination.
Climate change.
Pandemic viruses.
International terrorism.
Nuclear proliferation.
Maybe the Martians are coming in all these ways.
Maybe the Martians are carbon dioxide molecules that
are heating up the planet and will and whose solution will require not just
continental governance systems, but global governance systems.
And the same is true, as I said for, arguably, for nuclear proliferation and
international terrorism and, and pandemic viruses, and global opportunities.
We now have the internet and supersonic travel.
And, because of nuclear submarines and intercontinental missiles, we
are no longer separated from the rest of the world.
We might try to imagine we could build some
sort of, of protective bubble around this hemisphere or something.
But it's not going to be so easy when
you've got nuclear submarines just right off your coast.
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at, at Yale, it's a montage that as I told you
at the beginning, blends text, text of the preamble
with embodied actions in full living color, actual individuals who did things.
George Washington plays a particularly important role.
I hope this MOOC has combined actually a focus on the text, with also the focus on
embodied deeds of, of, a colorful individuals, and, groups.
This montage is partly taken from the facade, this,
the side of the National Constitution center in Philadelphia.
So one other thing, by way of advice, if you want to get,
experience more about the constitution, go
visit the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
They've got lots of amazing stuff.
So I wanted to sort of remind you of the, the
image that, that we began this MOOC, this massive online course with.
But I can't resist the temptation to show you one other image.
So let's see if this works here.
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And why are they talking about MOOCs?
I mean, by the way, if you look
really, really carefully, there's a little book there.
It's this book.
It's America's Constitution: a Biography.
And believe it or not, it was hard for me to believe.
They're actually talking about this book and this
MOOC in particular and here's why they are.
Because America's
Constitution was designed to be accessible to ordinary people.
That's why it was short, so people could read it.
No property qualifications, is to see and to read the thing.
And, and this has been a course that's been
at one level, designed to be accessible to ordinary people.
No property qualifications, no, no tuition.
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and this MOOC, you know if it worked at all, it worked because of, of the crew.
And I'd like to thank them, and they, and so
that's why I wanted to partly end with this picture.
But of course, this MOOC also, it doesn't work at
all unless there are folks at the other end, participating.
That's, that's you.
That's, that's we the people.
That's the only way which this MOOC idea, the idea of
public education, more generally, the
idea ultimately of constitutional self government.
Only way it works is if all sorts of people buy in.
Just take their not necessarily with money but with their time.
Take the time to actually, be at the other end of the educational experience.
So I end this lecture where I began with a, a very big thank you to
each and everyone of you for spending so much of your precious time, in this MOOC.