Outside the Beltway

Celebrating the Constitution Without the Citizens

Naturalized citizens advance and vivify the American experiment. 

Michael Bailey · Tuesday, September 16, 2025 · 3 comments

Tomorrow is September 17, Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. For educational institutions complying with the federal observance, however, the “Citizenship Day” portion of the day effectively does not exist.

In December 2004, tucked into a massive Senate appropriations bill, a little-noted, little-discussed, non-appropriations provision introduced by West Virginia (D) Senator Robert Byrd, for the first time directed state and private colleges on what they were required to teach. It also joined together two previously separate days of recognition. This was the birth of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.

I confess that at the time I was personally resentful of the bill. Nearly from its inception, I was tasked with ensuring that our college held an educational program in compliance with the federal Constitution Day requirement for all schools receiving federal money to hold “an educational program on the United States Constitution.” Another source of my peevishness came from my anxiety that this legislation was merely the tip of the spear for federal meddling in college curricula. (That worry was unwarranted at the time but has reemerged recently for different reasons, though the source of the meddling is the executive, not Congress.)

Setting my pettiness aside, I found the intent behind the bill decently admirable. The language of the legislation is broader than the educational mandate imposed on schools, and its purposes are more comprehensive. The statute codifying Constitution Day and Citizenship Day captures the legislation’s dual purpose:

To commemorate the formation and signing on September 17, 1787, of the Constitution and recognize all who, by coming of age or by naturalization, have become citizens.

The law further holds that:

The civil and educational authorities of States, counties, cities, and towns are urged to make plans for the proper observance of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day and for the complete instruction of citizens in their responsibilities and opportunities as citizens of the United States and of the State and locality in which they reside.

In short, the legislation commemorates the formation and signing of the Constitution and calls for recognition of naturalized citizens. It also urges (but does not require) civic authorities to guide citizens in meeting their civic responsibilities. In other words, Constitution Day and Citizenship Day recognize the importance of both constitutional institutions and citizens.

At the same time, the 2004 bill focuses almost exclusively on the commemoration of the Constitution, including its institutional framework, the initial convention, and the mechanics of ratification. While the law’s stated purpose includes recognizing naturalized citizens, the sole enforceable mandate directs schools to provide programs only about the Constitution’s formation, effectively ignoring the half of the day devoted to fostering citizen engagement and celebrating new citizens. In practice, schools can meet federal obligations by teaching eighteenth-century history alone, leaving ongoing civic responsibility untouched.

Seen from one angle, I am grateful for this limitation. I can teach about the Constitutional Convention, but I don’t really know how to teach responsible citizenship. On the other hand, this limitation seems a missed opportunity for schools to celebrate new immigrants or explore the obligations of responsible citizenship.

The mandate’s focus on history and institutional design, to the exclusion of citizenship, is striking because the Framers understood that good government requires two complementary remedies to the perennial problems of governance. One remedy, emphasized in the Constitution and The Federalist Papers, was the engineering of carefully calibrated institutions—separation of powers, federalism, checks and balances, staggered terms, and the balancing of competing interests. But the second remedy is no less important: the necessity of a virtuous (or virtuous enough) citizenry. For republicanism to work, it requires people willing to be informed, deliberate, and self-restrained. Federalist 57 captures this dual concern of institutional design and a virtuous citizenry. Madison writes:

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust…

Earlier in Federalist 51, Madison suggests that the primary constraint on bad government is a dependence on the people. He immediately follows this with the reminder that “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” In other words, a good citizenry is essential to republicanism, but well-designed institutions also provide great benefits. One can find many examples in The Federalist Papers (and the Anti-Federalist writings) where the emphasis between civic responsibility and institutional design shifts, but almost never do leading Framers dismiss the importance of either.

Sensible and courageous citizens matter because the Framers recognized that uninformed citizens are apt to be “misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men”—demagogues who would use flattery and fear to curry favor and divide the public. Citizenship, in this view, is not merely a legal status but an office with attendant responsibilities of allegiance and vigilance. Madison, again in Federalist 57, warns that the ultimate protection of the people against congressional rules favoring members of Congress at the expense of the citizenry is:

above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it. If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

In the United States, many of us are never called to pledge fidelity to the Constitution. In contrast, all naturalized citizens make this pledge, and the naturalization process requires applicants to pass a civics test covering political and historical American topics, including principles of democracy.

This, it seems to me, is sufficient reason why Constitution Day and Citizenship Day should allow schools to satisfy the law’s requirement with either a discussion of the Constitution or with a celebration of new citizenship and civic responsibilities—or, ideally, both. This dual approach reflects the original vision of the law and captures the fundamental complex truth of republican governance. It would also serve as a salutary annual reminder of how naturalized citizens advance and vivify the American experiment. 

To conclude with a somewhat speculative question: one wonders whether Senator Byrd’s otherwise anodyne bill, which combined Constitution Day with Citizenship Day and included the recognition of naturalized citizens, would even pass through Congress today, given the contemporary political controversy around celebrating immigrants.