By Nancy Spannaus
September 17, 2025—After more than three months of deliberation, on September 17, 1787, the Confederation Congress of the United States agreed upon and signed a new Constitution. That document, now amended and improved over the past 238 years, was considered a unique and risky “experiment” in governance. It has withstood the test of time, giving our nation an unparalleled stability and a foundation for progress.
In 1956, the U.S. Congress set aside the week of September 17-23 to honor that Constitution, and urged U.S. citizens to both study and celebrate its achievement. Yet, how much do we, the general public, know and understand about that document?
Perhaps we have noted that the President of the United States, upon inauguration day, has to take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution (excerpted in the headline). This practice is mandated in the Constitution itself in Article II, Section 1, which requires that the incoming President affirm that “”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
But do we realize that our Senators and Representatives also must swear an oath to uphold the Constitution? The text of that oath reads as follows:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
A similar oath has to be taken by members of the Armed Forces, the judiciary, the civil service, and individuals becoming naturalized citizens of the United States.
The Rule of Law
As should be clear, the implications of the required Presidential oath are profound. Under our system, the top executive – the President – is explicitly subservient to the higher law, which is embodied in the written Constitution itself.
English republicans had long argued that the same constraint applied to the King; if he failed to serve the public good, he was no longer a legitimate monarch. But they were usually unable to enforce that idea. Our Founding Fathers made this constraint explicit by defining our President’s role as an executor of the law, not its maker. A robust debate over what title to confer on the President concluded with the rejection of John Adams’ proposal to call him “His Excellency”; Congress decided that a simple “Mr. President” would best reflect his role.
The leading role in law-making, as even reflected in the ordering of the Constitution’s sections, was assigned to the Congress.
The astute citizen will note an interesting conundrum arising from the oath taken by Congressmen and Senators. After all, most of us believe that we elect our Senators and Congressmen to represent our local interests and desires in the Congress. But our Congressmen and Senators are not taking an oath to support us. They are compelled to swear allegiance to the principles set out in the Constitution of the nation. When there is a conflict, it is the Constitution which takes precedence.
Equally important, our legislators are not taking an oath to “support and defend” the incumbent President of the United States, or the political party to which he or she belongs. They are bound to support the principles and procedures outlined in the Constitution, from its Preamble to its last amendment.
So perhaps we had better make it our business to familiarize ourselves better with this Constitution.
Some Useful Resources
Over the past eight years, I have written a great deal about the process leading to the adoption of the Constitution, as well as its content. This collection of articles is too extensive to reprise here.
Some of those articles are included in my recent book, From Subject to Citizen: What Americans Need to Know about Their Revolution, but not all. Others are available in this blog. Here is a list of the most relevant for today:
The U.S. Constitution: What’s in a Preamble?
Our Constitutional Commitment to Economic Progress
Frederick Douglass on the U.S. Constitution
Commemorating Constitution Day
The Constitution and the Declaration
As we take a closer look at the Constitution, it is only reasonable that we raise the question of its relationship to our other Founding document, the Declaration of Independence. Is the Constitution, as some say, a “counter-revolutionary” document, putting the rights of property above the freedoms expressed in the Declaration? Is the Declaration just an idealistic demand for freedom, unrealistic in the current age? Or does the Constitution serve as a safeguard for those freedoms cited in the Declaration, by laying out the means and principles by which they can be fulfilled? I answer this question directly in From Subject to Citizen.
[Get From Subject to Citizen here.]
On this occasion, however, I turn to the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln to address the relationship. Lincoln is well-known for insisting that his every political thought sprang from his commitment to the Declaration: its insistence that all men (people-ed.) are created equal and have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that governments are established to secure these rights, “deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.”
But Lincoln also honored the Constitution, and, while ruminating over how he could address the crisis of secession as he waited for his inauguration, he addressed the relationship between the two documents in fragmentary Notes on the Constitution and the Union. Taking a metaphor from the Bible’s Book of Proverbs,[1] Lincoln wrote:
Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result [the creation and maintenance of a great nation]; but even these are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something is the principle of “liberty to all”—the principle that clears the path for all—gives hope to all—and by consequence, enterprise, and industry to all.
The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government and consequent prosperity. No oppressed people will fight and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better than a mere change of masters.
The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word “fitly spoken” which has proved an “apple of gold” to us. The Union and the Constitution are the picture[2] of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made not to conceal or destroy the apple but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.
So let us act, that neither picture or apple shall ever be blurred or bruised or broken.
That we may so act, we must study, and understand the points of danger.
At great cost, some of which we are still paying today, President Lincoln was able to lead the nation in preserving both the apple and the frame. This hecould do because he clung to the principles that lay behind them. It is those principles which we must revisit today, if we are to restore unity and prosperity to our republic.
Constitution Week is an excellent time to start.
[1] Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver” (KJV).
[2] This could best be understood as the picture frame.
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Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Congress, Constitution, Constitution Week, Nancy Spannaus, President
