"I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense 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 the individual 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."
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Civil rights activistsJustices of the Supreme Court of the United StatesJudges from the United StatesLawyers from the United StatesAfrican Americans
Original Language: English
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The Constitution's Bicentennial: Commemorating the Wrong Document? (1987), Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol 40, Issue 6 https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol40/iss6/3
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall
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Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 - January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.
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