Honoring the Icons, Part 1 | America's Unwritten Constitution with Akhil Reed Amar

Ask any audience, left or right, north or south, to name America's defining texts, and the same short list comes back. Akhil Reed Amar calls it the symbolic constitution. This lecture makes the case that a set of iconic texts supplements the written Constitution: the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Northwest Ordinance, the Gettysburg Address, Brown v. Board, and King's "I Have a Dream." Amar shows how they form a connected system, nearly all traceable to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, and how party politics helped raise them into a shared American creed. Chapters: 00:00 The Constitution as unifying symbol 01:25 A game: name the iconic American texts 06:47 First point: the symbolic constitution exists 11:16 How the texts connect to each other 13:26 Jefferson, Lincoln, and the two-party system 18:31 How the texts connect to the written Constitution 📚Learning objectives: After watching, you'll be able to: - Define the symbolic constitution and identify its canonical texts - Explain why Americans across party and region converge on the same texts - Trace the network linking these texts to Jefferson and Lincoln - Describe how these iconic texts connect to the written Constitution 📺 Watch the full playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLABHWcbOLwlY 🎓 Enroll on Coursera for assessments and a certificate: https://www.coursera.org/learn/unwritten-constitution 🌐 Explore more learning opportunities on Yale Online: https://online.yale.edu/courses/americas-unwritten-constitution