Marshall, Thurgood in the United States

Former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall,in re?ecting during the bicentennial in 1987 on theConstitution and its opening three words remarked:

“I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “?xed” at the Philadelphia Con-vention. Nor do I ?nd the wisdom, foresight, andsense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for theindividual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.For a sense of the evolving nature of the Constitution we need look no further than the ?rst three words of the document’s preamble: “We the People.” When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America’s citizens. “We the People” included, in the words of the framers, “the whole Number of free Persons.” On a matter so basic as the right to vote, for example, Negro slaves were excluded, althoughthey were counted for representational purposes atthree-?fths each. Women did not gain the right to vote for over a hundred and thirty years.”