A Preamble Is Not a Summary
It reads like an introduction and works like a promise. The difference matters more than the grammar suggests.
Every reading of a constitution begins where the drafters wanted it to begin, and that is rarely an accident. A preamble looks like throat-clearing before the real business of articles and clauses, which is exactly why it is so easy to skip.
But a preamble does not summarise the document that follows it. It commitsThe distinction is old, and courts have been unusually candid about finding it difficult. to something the rest of the text then has to live up to, and that ordering is the whole argument of this series.
A preamble does not summarise what follows. It commits to it.
Part two takes up what happens when a promise of that kind meets a clause that cannot enforce it.
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