BrainTeasers

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to our webpages.

Here you can test your knowledge of the American constitution and its history.

If you are a professor of law in the United States, or even a law student, we ask you not to take the test.

If you think you know something about the federal constitution or its history, again, we ask you not to take the test.

If you’re Joe the Pumber or can get your hands on a copy of the constitution, in the privacy of your own home – and are not burdened by legal education or other sins and credentials – go ahead.

And, by the way, you don’t have to tell the truth about the results.

After all, if you’re a lawyer or a judge, no one will believe you if you brag about your score.

It’s not that this is a difficult test.

It is.

But it’s more.

It’s the kind of test that exposes how little scholars – that’s honest to goodness Doctors of Law and Ph.D.’s [Doctor Philosophus, in case you didn’t know] – appreciate the complexity of constitutional knowledge.

So that’s what’s at stake.

Wait, wait. You still there?

Sure, you can’t recite Article VI without the text at hand.

So what?

What you can do is to appreciate the texture. Tessitura.

You can’t do that without someone holding your hand.

That’s where I come in.

Call me Inspector Spinoza.

It’s not my real name.

But then, the constitution itself doesn’t have a name.

Oh, it’s named in the text.

But the title is vacant.

That’s because, at the top, there’s only one thing for any American to write. Above ‘We the People.’ Above IT all. Go ahead, pick up your pen.

This is mine.

Now, let’s get started.

Or, allow me to finish the intro so you can get on with it.

Ahem.

Most of what people know about the constitution isn’t worth knowing.

Take the words.

John Marshall told us that the constitutional text was written so that we didn’t forget it. Or could remember it.

Which makes text, well, eminently forgettable.

Which means that if you think you know something because it’s text, or text based, or derives from text, then you don’t know anything other than symbols on a page. Or a mnemonic jiggle.

‘Go see Cal,’ if you want a good deal on a pick up truck. That sort of thing.

Now to the tests. There are many of them.

When completed there will be about forty of them.

Each about 10 questions long. More or less.

There are mostly of the multiple choice/multiple guess variety.

So you can guess.

Because the right answer isn’t.

It isn’t because there is no text-based answer.

Not even text that is meta-text.

Which is what this is. This introduction is, speaking to your about the introduction. Self-recursively so.

Get it?

Let’s keep going.

Say that you go through five to ten levels.

You start to get it.

What are you getting?

That you can’t get it by yourself.

The constitution isn’t designed to be a one woman game.

Or, crafting constitutional text doesn’t play out as a one man achievement.

If it were, all constitutions in the world would be written by Jeremy Bentham.

That’s a UCL joke.

[An explanation of the above-referenced joke:]

A man was so interested in what was useful to human beings that he had himself stuffed and put in a box so that university students could grin on their way to get a coffee.

Subtle.

Like a university department of silly walks.

And very British.

A little humour every now and then isn’t a bad thing.

So: You can’t use the constitutional text by yourself.

The text might as well not exist if you were the only one in the world to know of its existence.

So what are the minimum number of people require to do the constitution?

It turns out that this question was answered over two-and-a-half millennia ago.

But that’s getting just a little bit ahead of ourselves.

If you think you’re going to get enough ‘Teasers under your belt to stun the average lawyer or judge, fine by me.

That is playing kind of dirty, if you want to know the truth.

But then, think about it.

When’s the last time a lawyer or judge said it was your constitution, too?

When’s the last time a lawyer or judge started to talk about the federal constitution and did not, within fourteen seconds, begin to drone on about United States Supreme Court decisions?

Didn’t they notice that if there is no answer in the constitution, then text-based reasoning returns no reliable result? Hunh?

Just asking.

So when Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, somebody must have walked over to the Rotunda at the National Archives and taken a peek. Just a peek.

Or gone downstairs at the National Archives and asked to see a copy of Jackson’s Journals, the official record of proceedings. Which covers the interval from and including May 25, 1787 to September 14, 1787.

Notice the official record doesn’t include the two dates on which the constitution was adopted? Hmmmmm. That’s gotta hurt.

Oh, back to nuclear weapons.

‘Hmm. Gotta be in here somewhere. Oh here it is. “In the event new technologies are developed through the progress of science and the natural philosophy, exploitation thereof is reserved to the federal government”.’

Lemme see; how are we doing on our semantic quest.

Is that in the record of proceedings? In the text of the constitution? Or its amendments? Actually, no.

There were twelve proposed amendments, of which ten were adopted as of 1791; And two more. (1795, 1804). None of the fourteen allowed Congress to “keep pace with the advance of the age,” as Jefferson recommended (1824), “in science and experience.”

That’s Jefferson saying what should happen. But it didn’t.

So that is where, my friend, you’re going.

A simple parlour game.

Multiple choice.

The answers neatly printed near the questions.

(Some day I’ll get the answers ‘hidden’ so you have to mouse over them.)

But it’s a journey.

And you’re off.

In a cloud of dust.

BrainTeasers Level One