Editors’ Note

I. Purpose

The first edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution was published in 2005. The second edition was published in 2014. The third edition is now published in 2025. This once-a-decade publication strives to be the definitive compendium about each provision of the Constitution. We have four primary audiences. First, the book is written for a general audience with an interest in the Constitution. Second, this book will be a useful resource for students and scholars who want a quick reference for their research. Our essays are perfectly suited for a See generally footnote in a scholarly article. Third, practicing lawyers are increasingly expected to make arguments based on text, history, and tradition in constitutional litigation. The Guide will provide a helpful starting point for originalist briefing. Fourth, the lower courts, following the Supreme Court’s precedents, now focus more on text, history, and tradition. This Guide will provide a neutral and thorough accounting of the Constitution.

II. Structure

Over the past two decades, the federal judiciary has taken more seriously originalist scholarship. Even those judges who are otherwise skeptical of originalism have begun to incorporate text, history, and tradition into their opinions. Accordingly, all attorneys are well-advised to present arguments that are grounded in originalism. And increasingly, scholars across the ideological spectrum—whether they identify as originalists or not—are crafting articles that take original meaning seriously. The structure of the third edition of the Guide reflects this approach to judging, advocacy, and scholarship. Most of the essays separate history and modern precedent and are arranged roughly chronologically.

First, the essays track the history before 1787. The Constitution was not written on a blank slate. The essays begin with any relevant history that predated the federal Constitution, including the English common law, the natural law tradition, the law of nations, practices in the colonies, the Declaration of Independence, practices in the states post-independence, the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, and so on.

Second, the essays provide a deep dive into the records of the Constitutional Convention. We provide a detailed sequence of the various drafts, debates, and revisions during the summer of 1787.

Third, the essays cover the ratification debates, including a careful study of the Federalist Papers and the equally important Anti-Federalist Papers. Our essays also make use of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, corpus linguistics, and other compendiums.

Fourth, where relevant, we discuss practice from the early congresses and presidencies. These formative bodies established many of the traditions that helped give meaning to the Constitution.

Fifth, we finally turn to judicial precedent. This choice is deliberate. Far too often, judges, attorneys, and scholars start with the precedents of the Supreme Court. While these decisions are no doubt important, they tell only part of the story about the Constitution’s original meaning. Moreover, Supreme Court precedents change from time to time. It is impossible to provide a definitive account of all relevant judicial decisions. By contrast, the Founding-era sources can be stated definitively and will endure forever.

III. The Process

Due to the size of this project, we established a fairly rigorous process to ensure that essays of the highest quality were reviewed, edited, and revised in a timely fashion. Josh Blackman served as the Senior Editor and John G. Malcolm served as the Executive Editor. Our editors at Heritage included Seth Lucas, Jack Fitzhenry, Jenna Hageman, Meaghen McManus, John Osorio, Jameson Payne, and Alexander Phipps. We were also fortunate to have student editors who served on the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Texas Review of Law & Politics, as well as the Heritage Foundation intern program. We also assembled three external advisory boards. The Judicial Advisory Board included eighteen federal circuit courts of appeals judges, the Practitioner Advisory Board included thirteen Supreme Court advocates, and the Academic Advisory Board included ten law professors. All of the editors and advisors are listed on the masthead.

The publication process went through six rigorous phases. Phase 1 began in early 2022. Over the course of a year, every essay from the second edition was carefully scrutinized by our internal and external reviewers. During this process, we invited back authors to revise their essays and also invited many new authors to join the project. Moreover, we subdivided some essays that covered several clauses, thus creating more opportunities for new authors. We tried to develop a mix of senior professors, junior scholars, practitioners with relevant experience, and distinguished jurists. In Phase 2, authors were asked to deliver the first draft of their revised essays by the middle of 2023. We provided the authors with detailed guidelines to ensure that the essays were roughly uniform in structure and style and provided the proper focus on originalism. We are grateful to the authors for following our standards.

In Phase 3, throughout late 2023 and 2024, the substance of the first drafts was carefully reviewed by Blackman, Malcolm, and our internal editors at Heritage. Each essay was also referred to our external board for a double-blind review: Reviewers did not know the identity of the authors, and the authors did not know the identity of the reviewers of their respective essays. The external reviewers provided line edits, suggestions to add or remove material, and broader comments.

In Phase 4, during 2024, feedback was provided to the authors in an anonymized fashion so that they did not know who provided the comments. We are again thankful to the authors for considering and implementing many of our proposed edits.

Phase 5 began in mid-2024. Here, the essays were closely proofread, cite-checked, and bluebooked by Bill Poole, Heritage Senior Editor extraordinaire. External sources were digitized and archived to ensure citation accuracy.

Phase 6 commenced in 2025 as the essays were finalized and prepared for publication. We exerted our best efforts to catch all possible errors but still take responsibility for any mistakes that may have slipped through the process. The final text spanned approximately 500,000 words—more than fifty times the length of the Constitution and amendments. The complete Guide was delivered to the publisher in July 2025.

IV. Josh Blackman’s Note

In late 2021, my good friend John G. Malcolm asked me if I wanted to serve as the Senior Editor for the third edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution. On our initial call, which I remember like it was yesterday, John told me that Heritage wanted to “update” the Guide with some recent cases, but thought that the structure of the book would remain more or less the same.

My initial reaction was a combination of shock and humility. I considered the Heritage Guide to be the gold standard of constitutional scholarship. I couldn’t fathom why I, of all people, was being asked to carry the torch first lit by Attorney General Edwin Meese decades ago. John assured me that he thought I was up to the task and that he had been impressed with my past work. I remained skeptical, but I considered the project in earnest. Over the course of several weeks, I carefully read through the second edition with the recognition that it was written in a very different time. In the early 2000s, originalism was still something of a fringe theory with minimal support in the judiciary and the academy. But times have changed, and I realized that the third edition could speak to the current generation.

I returned to John and said I would take the job but would do more than simply “update” it. Over the ensuing months, I laid out an ambitious agenda. I would recruit external boards of advisors who would blindly review each essay. I would invite nearly one hundred new authors who represented the leading lights of originalist scholarship, advocacy, and jurisprudence. I would ask the authors to separate their essays carefully so that text, history, and tradition came before judicial precedent. (This task was much harder than it may seem.) I would require authors to provide full citations for all of their work so that scholars, practitioners, and jurists could rely on the material in the book. And all of this would be completed in the span of about four years.

This project was daunting, but we did it. I sincerely thank John for believing in me and supporting this generational project. It would have been very easy for Heritage to simply “update” the second edition to keep things as they were. But John backed my vision. I think the state of constitutional law will be improved for these efforts. I owe a sincere debt to Attorney General Meese. Even at the age of ninety-three, he remains actively involved with the Heritage Guide and so many other activities. One of the highlights of my professional career was visiting Mr. Meese in his home, as we recorded him reading aloud the text of the entire Constitution. I would also like to thank all of the staff at Heritage, in particular Seth Lucas, whose careful editing and comprehensive planning helped keep the project moving along apace.

Finally, I want to thank my loving family, Militza, Miriam, and Clara. Every minute I spent on this project was time you generously let me share with the world. I hope we can all keep the Constitution close to our hearts.

—Josh Blackman

Senior Editor

V. John G. Malcolm’s Note

Working on the third edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution has been both a Herculean task and a labor of love. The second edition was published shortly after I arrived at Heritage, and I long hoped that I would be around to work on the third edition. I am pleased with the final product and proud to have my name associated with it.

There are two people in particular whom I would like to acknowledge.

The first is Josh Blackman. The best decision that I made with respect to this undertaking was to ask Josh to serve as Senior Editor. Josh proved to be a whirling dervish of ideas, passion, and energy who devoted countless hours to corralling authors and advisors, ensuring the completeness and accuracy of each essay, making sure that steady progress was being made, and coming up with new ideas for how to make the Guide more useful and accessible to a broad audience.

The second is former Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Although my highest title at Heritage is Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government, I have always said that other than husband to my wife and father to my children, the title that has meant the most to me throughout my professional career has been Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. In addition to being a mentor, Ed Meese has been an inspiration to me and supporter of mine during my tenure at Heritage. Ed was a dedicated public servant and a stalwart protector of the Constitution. It was a series of seminal speeches that he delivered as our nation’s Seventy-Fifth Attorney General that sparked the revival of originalism. Those speeches pointed out just how far the judiciary had strayed from remaining faithful to the Framers’ intentions and the public’s understanding of the Constitution at the time it was written and ratified. The seeds that Ed Meese planted have grown into a mighty forest, transforming the judiciary and the Academy, arresting the erosion of our rights and liberties, and ensuring that the Constitution that was ordained and established in 1787 continues to serve “We the people” and not “We the judges.” The President under whom Ed Meese served, Ronald Reagan, once said, “If Ed Meese is not a good man, then there are no good men.” I wholeheartedly agree.

I would also like to thank all the authors and reviewers who worked on this project, with special thanks to Seth Lucas and Bill Poole, two of the most hard-working and meticulous professionals with whom I have been privileged to work. The timely completion and quality of the Guide owes much to their efforts, for which I am deeply grateful.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Mary Lee, who has always supported me and who has put up with my working more nights and weekends than she desired or deserved.

—John G. Malcolm

Executive Editor