In a fabulous New Yorker piece titled "The Battle Over the Constitution," Jill Lepore writes:

If you haven’t read the Constitution lately, do. Chances are you’ll find that it doesn’t exactly explain itself.

A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it demanding: the fact that so much was left out.

Read the whole thing.