The original is secured under glass at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. But according to Laurence H. Tribe, America’s leading liberal interpreter of the United States Constitution, “it’s not embalmed in a time capsule of amber as though it was not meant to change over time.” In this 1988 lecture at the New York Public Library's Celeste Bartos Forum, the Harvard Law School Professor of Constitutional Law, marks the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, originally drafted on parchment and signed September 17, 1787 by 39 of 42 delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Tribe, whose many books include his widely taught treatise, American Constitutional Law, passionately argues that the now centuries old document is a living blueprint, whose drafters left to future generations the tasks of filling out the notions of liberty and equality under the law. Seeking scholarly support for his argument, Tribe goes back to the historical moments when the Constitution was literally prepared, first as the hand-drafted parchment, and then the day after, on September 18, 1787, when 500 copies were printed en masse and delivered to Congress in New York City, the early capitol of the United States.

The law professor posits that the written words in this monumental document, while critical to the formation of our democracy, are not the sole source of the Constitution’s power. For evidence, Tribe notes that the early printed copy used when the Constitution was ratified by the original States contains errors of punctuation and capitalization. It was this printed copy that was relied on by Congress and the Judiciary until 1878, after the original parchment was removed from storage for the Philadelphia Exposition. Tribe suggests that an errant semi-colon in Section 8 of Article 1 of the original Constitution could have been discovered in that document creating an argument that the Framers meant Congress to have unbridled power to pass laws. Yet, such a discovery, says Tribe, would not have affected the long history of Constitutional interpretation limiting Congressional authority.

Tribe believes evolving understandings of the human needs of a changing American society injected meaning into the Constitution at its very outset beyond the limits of written words or grammar. Indeed, the Articles of Confederation, which convened the first and only Convention, required a unanimous vote of all the States to adopt a Constitution. Yet a desire for a governmental structure for the young nation drove the delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to adopt the Constitution with just the votes of nine of the thirteen states.

While acknowledging that there has been only one official Constitutional Convention in this nation’s history, the Constitutional expert argues that there have been several defacto Conventions. He sees a Second Constitutional Convention in the ratification after the Civil War of the 13th , 14th and 15th Amendments, which granted freedom to slaves and conferred due process of law to all and voting rights for men regardless of race.

He contends that the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 ruling in 1937 upholding a minimum wage law amounted to a 3rd Constitutional Convention because it effectively overturned past High Court interpretations of the 14th Amendment precluding laws limiting the property interests of businesses. The ruling opened a door extending Constitutional protections to the long line of laws existing today that establish labor and environmental rights.

The Harvard professor sees the Supreme Court’s recognition under Chief Justices Earl Warren and later Warren Burger of criminal due process rights, privacy rights, and the rights of women as the functional equivalents of Constitutional Conventions, in keeping with his theory of an evolving Constitution not bound by the idea of an “original intent” of its drafters. “We the People once just meant white, property owning men,” says Tribe. But that is no longer the case. As this renowned Harvard legal scholar proposes, the Constitution continuously grows along with the American social understanding of what constitutes liberty and equality, concepts that cannot remain stagnant.

Tribe, the author of God Save This Honorable Court, has argued more than any other living lawyer in front of the Supreme Court. He acknowledges the paramount importance of the Court in the development of a vibrant Constitutional Law, transformed over the years through decades of interpretation. This point of view compelled Tribe, who has testified many times before Congress, to lead the 1987 fight to reject Federal Circuit Court Judge Robert Bork, then President Ronald Reagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The reason for Tribe’s opposition: Bork steadfastly refused to acknowledge the existence of legally protected liberty interests, such as privacy rights, because such rights were not literally spelled out in the Constitution.

Finally, Professor Tribe applauds the public’s involvement in the Supreme Court nomination process, as well as vigorous advise and consent by the Senate on the President’s nominee. The law professor rejects the notion that this politicizes the selection of High Court Justices. Tribe sees it more as a collaborative process necessary to assure that the Constitution continues to be interpreted as a living document.

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Laurence Tribe's talk was broadcast as part of the Voices At the New York Public Library series airing originally on February 14, 1993.