Each topic of inquiry, below, contains a concise explanation of its meaning along with illustrative quotations drawn from The U.S. Constitution: A Reader.

Each of the primary source documents featured in The Constitution Reader is connected to these topics. To discover these connections within the fully-searchable Reader, simply click on the symbols found in the left margins of each page. Doing so will highlight the most important text for each topic and show the links between the topics and other documents.