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Book excerpt: “The Year of Living Constitutionally” by A.J. Jacobs
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New York Times bestselling author and humorist A.J. Jacobs previously wrote about his experiment in living life as interpreted by the Old and New Testaments in “The Year of Living Biblically.” Now, in an effort to fully understand our nation’s founding document, Jacobs embarked on a year-long quest to be the original originalist, in “The Year of Living Constitutionally” (to be published by Crown May 7). Yes, muskets were involved.
Read the book’s “preamble” below, and don’t miss John Dickerson’s interview with A.J. Jacobs on “CBS News Sunday Morning” May 5!
“The Year of Living Constitutionally” by A.J. Jacobs
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The Preamble
I recently discovered that if you walk around New York City while carrying an eighteenth-century musket, you get a lot of questions.
“You gonna shoot some redcoats?”
“Can you please leave?”
“What the hell, man?”
Questions aside, a musket can come in handy. When I arrived at my local coffee shop at the same time as another customer, he told me, “You go first. I’m not arguing with someone holding that thing.”
Why was I carrying around a ten-pound firearm from the 1790s? Well, it’s because I’m deep into my year of living constitutionally. For reasons I’ll explain shortly, I’ve pledged to try to express my constitutional rights using the tools and mindset of when they were written in 1787. My plan is to be the original originalist.
I will bear arms, but only those arms available when the Second Amendment was written. Hence the musket and its accompanying bayonet.
I will exercise my First Amendment right to free speech—but I’ll do it the old-fashioned way: by scratching out pamphlets with a quill pen and handing them out on the street.
My right to assemble? I will assemble at coffeehouses and taverns, not over Zoom or Discord.
If I’m to be punished, I will insist my punishment not be cruel and unusual, at least not cruel and unusual by eighteenth-century standards (when, unfortunately, Americans considered it acceptable to have your head stuck in a pillory and get pelted by mud and rotten vegetables).
Thanks to the Third Amendment, I may choose to quarter soldiers in my apartment—but I will kick them onto the street if they misbehave.
My goal is to understand the Constitution by expressing my rights as they were interpreted back in the era of Washington and Madison (or, in the case of the later amendments, how those amendments were interpreted when they were ratified). I want, as much as possible, to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers. And by doing so, I want to figure out how we should live today. What do we need to update? What should we ignore? Is there wisdom from the eighteenth century that is worth reviving? And how should we view this most influential and perplexing of American texts?
I undertook this quest because reading the news over this past year led me to three important revelations.
The first revelation was just how much our lives are affected by this 4,543-word document inscribed on calfskin during that long-ago Philadelphia summer. The Supreme Court’s recent controversial decisions on a multitude of issues—including women’s rights, gun rights, environmental regulations, and religion—all claim to stem from the Constitution.
The second revelation was just how shockingly little I knew about the Constitution. I’d never even read it—not the whole thing, anyway. Thanks to Schoolhouse Rock!, I was familiar with the “We the People” preamble. And I could recall a handful of other famous passages, most notably the First Amendment, which is beloved by me and my fellow writers (as well as by my kids, who cite it whenever I ask them not to curse at me). But as for the entire document, from start to finish? Never read it.
And third, I realized just how much the Constitution is a national Rorschach test. Everyone, including me, sees what they want. Does the Constitution support laissez-faire gun rights, or does it support strict gun regulation? Does it prohibit school prayer or not? Depends on whom you ask.
And it’s not just the issues we’re divided on—it’s the Constitution itself. Is the Constitution a document of liberation, as I was taught in high school? Or is it, as some critics argue, a document of oppression? Should we venerate this brilliant road map that has arguably guided American prosperity and expanded freedom for 230-plus years? Or should we be skeptical of this set of rules written by wealthy racists who thought tobacco-smoke enemas were cutting-edge medicine?*
[* Tobacco-smoke enemas were a mainstream medical treatment for all sorts of ills. They involved hoses, smoke, and hand-powered bellows. It is quite possibly the origin of the phrase “blowing smoke up your ass.”]
It reminds me of a William Blake quote I once read about the Bible:
[We] both read the Bible day and night
But thou read’st black where I read white.
And, as with the Bible, whether you see black or white in the Constitution depends largely on one crucial question: What is your method for interpreting this text?
Should we try to discover the original meaning from when the text was written? Or does the meaning of the text evolve with the times?
In fact, the Bible-Constitution parallels helped give birth to this book. I decided to steal an idea from myself. Several years ago, I wrote a book called The Year of Living Biblically, in which I explored the ways we interpret the Bible. I did this by following the rules in the Good Book as literally as possible. I followed the Ten Commandments, but I also followed the hundreds of more obscure rules. I grew some alarmingly sprawling facial hair (Leviticus says you should not shave the corners of your beard) and tossed out my poly-cotton sweaters (Leviticus says you cannot wear clothes made of two kinds of fabric). I became the ultimate fundamentalist.
The project was absurd at times but also enlightening and inspiring. I found that some aspects of living biblically changed my life for the better (the emphasis on gratitude, for instance). I also learned the dangers of taking the Bible too literally (I don’t recommend stoning an adulterer in Central Park, even if those stones are pebble-sized, as mine were). And I learned how challenging it is to figure out what we should replace literalism with.
I’m not the first to notice that we treat the Constitution and the Bible in similar ways. Scholars have long described the Constitution as the sacred text of our civic religion. Jefferson called the delegates “demigods.” And as with the Bible, there is an ongoing debate between those who say we should hew to the original meaning and those who say the meaning evolves. It’s the originalists versus the living constitutionalists. The two camps have been around for decades, but in the past five years, the originalists have gained surprising power. Five of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court are originalists of some sort (John Roberts is the exception), a position that has affected their rulings on abortion, gun rights, and many other topics. I felt it was time. I began prepping for a year of living constitutionally.
Excerpted from “The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning” by A.J. Jacobs. Published by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Copyright © 2024 by A.J. Jacobs.
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A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. Over the course of her trial, Pelicot — who insisted her full name be published and proceedings be made public — has been praised for her courage and become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and around the world. The judge on Thursday was reading out verdicts for dozens of other men also accused of raping her.
Pelicot arrived Thursday at the court in Avignon, southeast France, where crowds had gathered outside holding signs saying: “Thank you for your courage.”
The trial began on Sept. 2, and almost every day, Pelicot came face to face with her former husband, Dominique, or one of the 49 other men charged with raping her. One other man faced a charge of aggravated sexual assault. She insisted that videos submitted as evidence, made by her ex-husband showing men sexually assaulting her while she appeared to be unconscious, be shown in open court.
The assaults took place between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was taken into custody. Police found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse on his computer drives, which helped lead them to other suspects. Some of the men testified they thought the unconscious woman was OK with it, or that her husband’s permission was enough.
“Gisèle Pelicot thinks that this shock wave is necessary, so that no one can say after this: ‘I didn’t know this was rape,'” her attorney, Stéphane Babonneau, told The Associated Press.
“It’s not for us to feel shame — it’s for them,” Pelicot said in court, referring to the attackers. “Above all, I’m expressing my will and determination to change this society.”
Controversial French laws
Pelicot’s case triggered protests across France, and there was hope among some demonstrators that the case could lead to changes in controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
France introduced a legal age of sexual consent in 2021 after a public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a man who was initially convicted on a lesser charge. Since then, sex with anyone under the age of 15 has been viewed as non-consensual, but French law does not refer to consent in cases involving older victims.
Under French law, rape is defined as penetration or oral sex using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” without taking consent into account, according to the Reuters news agency. Prosecutors must, therefore, prove an intention to rape if they are to be successful in court, legal experts told Reuters.
Just 14% of rape accusations in France lead to formal investigations, according to a study by the Institute of Public Policies.
“Why don’t we manage to obtain convictions? The first reason is the law,” legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse told Reuters. “The law is written in such a way that victims must comply with the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘true rape’: an unknown attacker, use of violence, and the victim’s resistance. But it is only true for a minority of rapes.”
“I’m trying to understand”
Speaking in court during the trial, Pelicot, who is 72, talked about how she had thought she was in a loving marriage with her husband and would never have guessed that he was drugging her.
“We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes,” Pelicot told the court.
“We finished eating. Often when it’s a football match on TV, I’d let him watch it alone. He brought my ice cream to my bed, where I was. My favorite flavor — raspberry — and I thought: ‘How lucky I am. He’s a love.'”
She said she didn’t have any sensation of being drugged.
“I never felt my heart flutter. I didn’t feel anything. I must have gone under very quickly. I would wake up with my pajamas on,” Pelicot told the court, adding that she would sometimes wake up “more tired than usual, but I walk a lot and thought it was that.”
“I’m trying to understand,” she said, “how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have got to this.”
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
