The Preamble (#00)

Hi! For those of you wanting to know where I'm reading the constitution, I'm using the government archives at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html. I will always use this page to read the Constitution, as I don't have a print copy handy.

Anyways, in this section we will cover the preamble of the Constitution, or section 00.

Let's break this down into sections:

in Order to . . . do ordain and establish

This means that the writers are about to declare their purpose for writing the Constitution.

The above may seem silly, but it's important to know that the writers of the Constitution had specific purposes in mind. Otherwise it would be very hard to interpret the body of the Constitution. Here's a paraphrase of the reasons, in order.

1. The writers wanted to promote national unity
2. They wanted to not only continue, but ESTABLISH justice. This means that presumably, the Articles of Confederation had erred here.
3. They wanted to protect peace within their borders.
4. They wanted to be able to protect against invasion, whether internal or external.
5. They wanted to increase general health, happiness, and wealth.
6. They wanted to be able to pass down freedom to themselves and their offspring.

And that's the preamble. It's kind of hard to break something that doesn't actually do anything. Therefore, I'm going to leave out any historic infractions this time, primarily due to lack of them (although there is one big one called the Civil War).