Abstract

When America's Thomas Jefferson insists that work hard to perfect the work of the Framers, he exhorts us to carry forth the creative, revolutionary spirit ourselves. In Kevin Bleyer's Me the People: One Man's Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States, Thomas Jefferson is a constant source of inspiration. Me the People doesn't remain at the level of theory. The chapter on the Judiciary, devoted to Bleyer's improbable lunch with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the Justice most closely associated with the controversial constitutional theory of originalism, is the clear climax of the book. Although Scalia a darling of the Tea Party and a conservative Catholic, evangelicalism does not permeate his legal reasoning. Sure Me the People is a fun book on American history, but it prods the reader comically, by exploiting the comedic value of the fact that so few Americans read the Constitution.