The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Fully Revised Second Edition Hardcover – September 15, 2014

This is a "text book" on our Constitution. Covers everything from the preamble to the 27th amendment using the Federalist letters, court decisions, etc. The reader will not only know the document better, but appreciate it much more after reading this wealth of research.

Excellent reference book or can be used to learn our Constitution. Easy to read and well explained without bias. based on original meaning/intent/ interpretation and case law and as a reference/research book or go to authority on the Constitution. If you want to learn provisions of the constitution at a glance without being in law school this is the book. Excellent for lawyers and layman alike.

I had the first edition of this book, and I wanted a copy of the revised second edition. This is a comprehensive treatise on the United States Constitution. This is the book to use when you want a scholarly coverage of The Law of Our Land.

Beautifully written and presented. What incredibly wise and Godly men our forefathers were! We cannot let our beautiful country be destroyed from the bottom up! God help us!

This should be required reading in every high school in the US. Those of us who did not get a high quality civics or constitution course should buy it and study it.

I hated my high school Civics class, but I'm thoroughly enjoying this book. I'd recommend it for anyone who is interested in learning about the Constitution. It's well written and informative.

The reader is told in the introduction that The Heritage Guide to the U.S. Constitution was written to “provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the Framers and as applied in contemporary law” that will be “accessible and helpful for informed citizens and students of the Constitution generally.” The Guide is an ambitious effort that employed nearly 100 prominent and accomplished constitutional scholars to write in-depth essays about every facet of the U.S. Constitution. While it is amazingly informative, its fault lies in its overly substantial deference to the national government, which does not reflect the true nature of our founding document's ratification.The preface to the Guide explains that it utilized three sources: the records and debates of the constitutional convention, The Federalist Papers, and Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. While the first two sources are vitally important, the third was published almost 30 years after the ratification. Not only is it not legally binding whatsoever, but it was also biased in favor of a nationalist vision. The story, along with Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Daniel Webster, John Marshal,l and eventually Abraham Lincoln, all twisted the details of the ratification to argue for a nationalist and even a monarchist vision of a much stronger central government than what was actually created at the ratification.Noted legal scholar of the day and prominent Jeffersonian republican Abel P. Upshur actually wrote an entire book to refute what he felt were misconceptions spread by Story’s Commentaries. Upshur criticized Story for construing the Constitution from the small Federalist faction's perspective at the convention and ignoring the ratification's true historical nature. Upshur argued that doing so betrays the very Constitution itself and enables a runaway central government to trample the sovereignty of the states as well as the individual rights of American citizens.In Upshur’s book A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of our Federal Government, he wrote the “principle that ours is a consolidated government of all the people of the United States, and not a confederation of sovereign states must necessarily render it little less than omnipotent. That principle, carried out to its legitimate results, will assuredly render the federal government the strongest in the world… Upon the theory that it possesses all the powers of the government, there is nothing to check, nothing to control it.”Upshur even hypothesized what would happen under this scenario where the states had no recourse but to do as the federal government dictated. “Let it be supposed that a certain number of States, containing a majority of the people of all the States, should find it to their interest to pass laws oppressive to the minority, and violating their rights as secured by the Constitution. What redress is there upon the principles of Judge Story? Is it to be found in the federal tribunals? They are themselves a part of the oppressing government and are, therefore, not impartial judges of the powers of that government…. Under such a system as this, it is a cruel mockery to talk about the rights of the minority. If they possess rights, they have no means to vindicate them…. This is the despotism of the worst sort, in a system like ours.”Upshur’s criticisms still ring true today, where an all-powerful centralized super-state has replaced the constitutional republic of old. This expansive government growth only occurred because centralizers similar to Story successfully changed the Constitution from restraining federal power to being a source of unlimited national power. A truly Jeffersonian republican analysis of the Constitution, which was part of this nation’s fabric up through the 18th century, would take into account the subjective understanding of the ratifiers, which the public debates can infer at the different state conventions as well as assurances as to the nature of the proposed central government made by advocates of ratification. This analysis always concludes that the Constitution created a minimal central government entrusted only with specifically enumerated powers. The Guide’s failure to view the Constitution from this perspective is painfully noticeable regarding its essay on the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, which is much broader than what was originally authorized.Still, most of the scholarly research in the book is extremely well done and certainly worth reading. It concisely makes the following astute and correct assertions: The General Welfare clause is “negative, not positive — a limitation on power, not a grant of power”; the spending clause of Article I is limited “only to further ends specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution,” and the “Interstate Commerce” clause applied only to the free commerce of goods between the states rather than the open-ended grant of legislative power to Congress that it has been held out to be since the New Deal.

Was required to buy this for my law school class in Constitutional Law. Great book to have, not just as a law student but also for the everyday citizen to really know the Constitution. Has great explanations of each Article and Amendment.