America's Constitution: A Biography by Akhil Reed Amar Reviewed by Richard Primus
The New Republic Online
"American constitutional law has never come fully to grips with the Civil War. A constitution is a system of government, and no system of government fulfills its basic purposes if it cannot settle divisive political issues by non-violent means. In other words, a civil war is a constitutional failure. In the American case, it may be said that the Civil War of 1861-1865 marked the catastrophic failure of the Constitution of 1787.
Given the enormity of the collapse, it is remarkable that American civic culture has not internalized any real sense that the Constitution failed...." Read the entire The New Republic Online Review.