The First Amendment, for example, gives us the right to speak our minds without government interference. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment stops the state from discriminating against us because of our race or gender. And the Fourth Amendment, as our television crime dramas continually remind us, prevents the police from searching our homes without a warrant. I would bet that in the past twenty years, several hundred books have been written about these important clauses, and for good reason. This book, however, is not one of them. Instead, this book will shine a much-deserved light on some of the Constitution’s lesser-known clauses—its benchwarmers, its understudies, its unsung heroes, its crazy uncles. To put it another way, if the Constitution were a zoo, and the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth amendments were a lion, a giraffe, and a panda bear, respectively, then this book is about the Constitution’s shrews, wombats, and bat-eared foxes. And believe me, if you’ve never laid eyes on a bat-eared fox before, you are in for a treat.
