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The American Constitution is a true gift of American political culture to the democratic world.

Maintaining the text, amended few times, for over two hundred years is an example of

preservation and cultivation of core values of a community through the turmoil of history. The

Constitution is a heritage of the nation and the generations are entitled to the legacy left by

their ancestors and should preserve it. There is no denying the imperiousness of the

Constitution to establish the national security and the values of freedom espoused by

contemporaries of the Founding Fathers, as well as its amendments, such as those which

defined the post-Civil War period, granting and extending basic rights to those who did not

previously possess them.

There is no doubt that the 1787 Constitution and its subsequent amendments compose the

official canon. However, many Americans agree that the text tells only a small part of the

constitutional history of the country and to understand it in its completeness we must look

elsewhere. For Americans, the cultural constitution of community matters. Thus, the

constitutional interpretation must take into account all intellectual production that takes the

mark of American values and goals in the various areas of knowledge, such as art, literature

and politics. This knowledge is passed from generation to generation by living in community,

by the education given to children, by the traditions that are grown and even by novels that

are written and published. As an example, we can mention the Federalist Papers(written by

Alexander Hamilton , James Madison and John Jay), one of the most important works of

political science in the democratic world, that should be read side by side with the 1787

Constitution, so it can actually be understood in its many details.

To understand American constitutionalism (which is inserted in the tradition of common law)

as a whole, we must also look to judicial precedents. It is virtually impossible to understand,

for instance, the main advances of the twentieth century without taking into account the main

cases of the modern era. Often such precedents gain much more weight than the official

canon. Among the most important of them we can cite Brown v. Board of Education, which

represents a milestone in civil rights era, putting an end on racial segregation in American

public schools. Also, we can mention Griswold v. Connecticut, which expanded the spectrum

of the right to privacy. We can leave aside the modern era and go deeply back in time to

remember Marbury v. Madison, which established the supremacy of the Constitution over all

other type of legislative documents. Therefore, the precedents (in this case, super-

precedents), represent landmarks of American constitutional tradition and the Supreme Court

is obliged to recognize and not overrule them.

Last, but not least, let us remember the statutes that have great relevance in the constitutional

landscape. It is possible and legit that the ordinary legislative process produces statutory key

texts in the constitutional scenery due to widespread popular support. Let us mention those

statutes that comprised Roosevelts New Deal, a president with a strong popular support for

his mandate. Those statutes were repeatedly blocked by the Supreme Court on grounds of

alleged unconstitutionality. Also, several statutes were enacted during the expansion of Civil

Rights and were taken into account for Constitutional interpretation.

In this scenario, we believe that the U.S. Constitution is the unremovable beacon of

constitutional interpretation. However, it is not about the whole story and even the text

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recognizes it (9th

Amend: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be

construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People)To understand the American

constitutional history along its more than two hundred years of duration, one must take into

account 1) the culture of the community, 2) the super-precedents and 3) the key statutory

texts (statutes).