We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Preamble does not, in itself, have substantive legal meaning. The understanding at the time was that preambles are merely declaratory and are to be read as defining rather than granting or limiting power—a view sustained by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). The Preamble has considerable potency, however, by virtue of its specification of the purposes for which the Constitution exists.
The Preamble is far more a statement of the people’s duties than their hopes, duties by which they are honor bound to hold the government both politically and legally accountable.