History 3600-G Website
History Department
Eastern Illinois University

Welcome to the "The Constitution and the Nation"-a customized website for History 3600-G at Eastern Illinois University. The Constitution and the Nation website brings various on-line resources together and provides instructional tools such as self-graded quizzes, source materials, annotated supreme court cases, and a section entitled the "Constitution in the News." Instructors will use the site for making assignments outside of class and integrated its content into the classroom via projection. The website includes a series of instructional assignments designed to enhance the students' understanding of assigned readings, lectures, and class discussions. Students will use the resources found on this and linked sites in the research assignments made by their instructors. The research project will be created in stages as directed in class.

Instructors will provide students with book marked websites that are germane to constitutional and legal history that will be integrated into lectures and discussions. The assignments are designed to enhance the students' understanding of course readings, lectures, and discussions.

The United States Constitution is a living document that has linked each generation of Americans since it ratification in 1789. American citizens are the inheritors the constitution's fundamental principles and in turn shape its development and interpretation through the amendment process and through the federal courts. The constitution reflects the experiences and concerns of previous generations but as an organic document it is subject to change. As Thomas Jefferson would have it, "the dead hand of the past" does not dictate the destinies of generations yet unborn. Each generation will continue to reinterpret and change the constitution in light of its own experience and concerns, precisely as they have since emergence of the United States as a federal republic in 1789.

Fundamentally, the United States Constitution is a written document that embodies political and legal ideas in government. Constitutional literacy is mastery of the key concepts, issues, and court cases that have historically defined the constitution and the nation as an organic body of law, beliefs, values, practices, and political institutions. The wider dimensions of constitutional history and law, however, radiate well beyond the province of lawyers and judges. It also shapes and is shaped by the lives of ordinary men and women. Social and cultural history inform the process in which the U.S. Constitution has developed and the deliberations of the Supreme Court. Social and cultural issues are mediated in the courts and the American political arena as defined by the Constitution. Groups such as American Indians, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, laborers, capitalists, reformers, and activists in the gay and lesbian community have all advanced their interests under the banner of their constitutional rights, privileges, and immunities as citizens of the United States.

What, then, does the constitution mean for you? Think of this question as you use this site during your course of study.

Quizzes