[C]onstitutional silences, like silences of other kinds, aren’t just occasional gaps or omissions in an otherwise-seamless design. They’re everywhere… - Laurence Tribe

[I]t would be strange to pretend we can discuss "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" today without any reference to Donald Trump...

One cannot speak of "groups" as though society were objectively subdivided... Instead, people draw lines, attribute differences, as a way of ordering social justice—of deciding who may occupy what place, play what role, engage in what activity. Thus, in order to justify the role of chattel that blacks initially played in our society, we may have differentiated that role by describing it in terms of the most obvious distinguishing feature... equating race and role. This equation and thus "group" survived the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment... simply by reason of confusion or inertia, but because the role that society allowed remained partially unchanged; thus, the need to justify the role by differentiating it, by seeing not the role but the group—"inferior" blacks capable of nothing better...—persisted.

This book challenges the inevitability of permanent conflict... and tries to lay the groundwork for moving on.