A collection of essays discussing the theoretical origins and revolutionary context of the Constitution, its application to issues such as civil liberties and national versus state powers, and the evolution of the three branches of government.

Collection of essays chosen from This Constitution magazine, published by Project '87.

The Constitution : thirteen crucial questions / James MacGregor Burns and Richard B. Morris -- Eighteenth-century American constitutionalism / Gordon S. Wood -- From Confederation to Constitution : the revolutionary context of the great convention / Lance Banning -- The imperial roots of American federalism / Jack P. Greene -- Framing a congress to channel ambition / Michael J. Malbin -- The origins of the national judiciary / Philip B. Kurland -- Liberty and taxes : the early national contest / Thomas P. Slaughter -- To regulate commerce : federal power under the constitution / Charles A. Lofgren -- The constitution and the bureaucracy / Martin Shapiro -- James Madison and the extended republic : theory and practice in American politics / Jack N. Rakove -- Education for a republic : federal influence on public schooling in the nation's first century / David Tyack and Thomas James -- Weevils in the wheat : free blacks and the constitution, 1787-1860 / James Oliver Horton -- The meaning of American citizenship / Rogers M. Smith -- The meaning of a free press / Paul L. Murphy -- Retrieving self-evident truths : the fourteenth amendment / Howard N. Meyer -- Winning in the courts : interest groups and constitutional change / Frank J. Sorauf -- War powers of the president and congress : who decides whether America fights? / W. Taylor Reveley III - War powers in nineteenth-century America : Abraham Lincoln and his heirs / Harold M. Hyman -- Vietnam and the constitution : the war power under Johnson and Nixon / Michal R. Belknap -- What constitutional changes do Americans want? / Austin Ranney -- Chronology of bicentennial dates from the end of the American Revolution to the ratification of the Bill of Rights -- The Constitution of the United States.