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Archetypes Of Faith: How Americans See, And Believe In, Their Constitution, Aliza Plener Cover

Articles

In this Article, I offer a new framework to illuminate how American faith in the Constitution is sustained over time. I build upon the evocative Passover story of the Four Sons—one of whom is wise, one wicked, one simple, and one who does not know how to ask—and argue that these archetypes resonate deeply in the constitutional context. I identify the “wise sons” of the American constitutional community—the legal elites who maintain the vitality of the constitutional faith through a fastidious, intergenerational, yet somewhat detached analysis of the intricacies of law; the “simple sons”—the People writ large, who relate to …