The Constitution of the People: Reflections on Citizens and Civil Society

To be a U.S. citizen is to be a member of a constitutional order that requires political unity but is also committed to social and cultural diversity. How do we solve the riddle of the one and the many? What is, in Tom Paine’s words, “the constitution of the people”?

This is a perennial question that goes to the heart of American society and that increasingly shapes public debates about the health of our body politic. To answer it, Robert Calvert, a political scientist, has collected origina...