All of you, I’m sure, are awaiting tomorrow with bated breath: Sept. 17 is everyone’s favorite holiday, Constitution Day! There have been all sorts of fun and exciting events taking place on campus this week to celebrate this beloved holiday, and tomorrow the UT College of Law is hosting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in honor of the day.

I am going to celebrate tomorrow by walking up to some of you randomly on the Pedestrian Mall, asking you to recite the Preamble to the Constitution for me, and, if you fail to do so, I am kicking you in the shins. (Thomas Jefferson was known for doing this). If you can do it, I’ll give you some Skittles! If you can do it in Latin, I will give you even more Skittles, and a firm handshake. I anticipate relieving a lot of stress tomorrow.

I once, in fact, learned the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution in Latin. I don’t remember it now, and I recently asked myself, what was the use of learning the Preamble in Latin (besides that being a cool party trick, I mean)? And as far as that goes, what was the point of you and me memorizing the Preamble in our high school government classes? It’s never really been useful. Also, its phrasing isn’t as pretty as the prose of the Declaration, so I don’t even quote lines from the Preamble in other contexts, though I certainly could.

In my humble, and somewhat flippant, opinion, it was pointless for us to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution in high school. Pointless, because it seems as if mere memorization was the end of the lesson; that this memorization was a sufficient substitute for understanding of the text. This is a type of legalism that I hate and am particularly susceptible to: The part is accepted in place of the whole, the form valued over the content. You can often see this with the memorization of religious creeds and catechisms, too.

Memorization of texts and creeds can be useful, don’t get me wrong. But my problem is that I tend to settle for a superficial knowledge of something (i.e. memorized passages) in place of an understanding, or internalization, of the content. To my mind, the point of memorizing something is that hopefully the meaning behind the words will be internalized, but this is often not the case. To go back to our example, what’s the use of having the Preamble memorized (besides, again, it being a useful party trick)? The Preamble is not law and being able to recite it won’t help you in a legal context. It is much more useful to, if not memorize, at least understand the Constitution itself, and its subsequent amendments. Interestingly, a Jay-Z song provides a perfect example of this.

In the song “99 Problems,” Jay-Z describes a situation in which he is pulled over by a policeman (possibly in an instance of racial profiling, but that is not our concern for the moment). When the policeman, without cause, asks for him to step out

of the car, and then asks for permission to lookaround the vehicle, Jay-Z refuses, saying, “I know my rights so you gon’ need a warrant for that.” The policeman, taken off-guard, asks whether the rapper is a lawyer, to which Jay-Z responds, “Nah

I ain’t pass the bar but I know a lil’ bit/ Enough that you won’t illegally search my …” (you can supply that final word yourself).

I have no idea whether Jay-Z has the Preamble to the Constitution memorized (though, let’s be real, he probably does), or if he’s even aware that the right he’s invoking is the Fourth Amendment, protection against unreasonable searches and

seizures. But that doesn’t matter, does it? At least not in this case. He understands the substance of the law, if not the form: the meaning rather than the appearance.

I’ll end there because, who am I kidding, this whole column was just an excuse to talk about a rap song I like. Sept. 17, in addition to being Constitution Day, is the birthday of one of my roommates, and, this year, the beginning of Yom Kippur. So tomorrow is a very big day. Enjoy all the holidays, and good luck to the team Saturday.