Joseph D. Steinfield is an attorney living in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.

The Preamble to the Constitution explains the document was intended to promote “the general Welfare” and provide the “Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” In a time when the rule of law is under attack, Americans should recognize that our governing document is not a rule book — except when it is.

Article II of the Constitution deals with the presidency and limits eligibility to “natural born citizens” at least 35 years old. That’s a rule. No one can read that provision and then claim in good faith that someone who is not a “natural born citizen,” a person born in this country or the child of an American citizen, or someone who is younger than 35 may become president.

Other constitutional provisions are equally clear and unforgiving. Article I, Section 1, vests “all legislative powers” in “a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives” — all, not “some” legislative powers. You don’t need to be a lawyer, much less a constitutional scholar, to know that federal laws come from one place: Congress, not the president and not the courts.

Article V provides two ways of amending the Constitution. One is by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate; the other is by a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of the states. In either case, an amendment requires ratification by three-fourths of the states. Amending the Constitution isn’t easy. Including the Bill of Rights, which accounts for the first ten amendments, it has happened only 27 times since 1787. Two amendments, prohibition and its repeal, cancel each other out. Only “We the people,” acting through elected representatives, have the power to amend. There is no such thing as amending the Constitution by executive order.

Some constitutional provisions establish rules of government, while others articulate principles to guide future generations in the search for “a more perfect union.” For example, Article II says that the “executive power” shall be vested in the president. Unlike the presidential eligibility, law-passing and amendment rules, this provision expresses a principle, and the Founding Fathers left it to future generations to determine the scope of the executive power. We are watching that process unfold even as you read this opinion piece.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, says that no state shall deprive “any person” of life, liberty or property without “due process of law” nor deny “equal protection of the laws” to “any person within its jurisdiction.”

“Person,” not “citizen.”

These principles form the basis for much of the constitutional law that has developed during the last 100 years. The Constitution does not require integrated public education in so many words, but in 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that “separated educational facilities are inherently unequal” and therefore violate the equal protection clause. That ruling doesn’t seem like “originalism,” and whether today’s Supreme Court would have ruled as the Court did in 1954 is anyone’s guess. But it exemplifies the important role of the Supreme Court in modern American life.

As for defying court rulings, when Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas tried to prevent Black students, known as the “Little Rock Nine,” from entering Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957, at the mayor’s request, President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne.

The Constitution also means what it does not say. If the men who wrote the Constitution wanted to make our government “efficient,” they would not have installed checks and balances, which slow things down and favor deliberation and compromise. Checks and balances are, by definition, inefficient.

The Fourteenth Amendment says: “All persons born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Not “some” persons but “all.”

On Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that began with the words “the privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.” It then quotes the birthright citizenship clause and cites the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as the basis for the order purporting to eliminate birthright citizenship.

So far, four federal judges, including Chief Judge Joseph Laplante of the New Hampshire federal district court, have issued injunctions preventing the implementation of this executive order, which would have otherwise become effective this week, on Wednesday, Feb. 19. The judge in Seattle wrote, “If the government wants to change the … grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself. That’s how our Constitution works, and that’s how the rule of law works.”

In other words, birthright citizenship is not a “gift.” It’s a rule of law.