TribLIVE examines a ‘Constitution Under Construction’

Lori Falce is a columnist and community engagement editor for TribLIVE and Trib Total Media in Tarentum, Pennsylvania.

She didn’t just give readers a history lesson. She challenged them to think about how our democracy works. That’s journalism at its best.”

Luis Fábregas, editor, TribLIVE

Lori Falce set out at the beginning of 2026 to remind her readers what the U.S. Constitution is all about. She wanted to have something special to offer to TribLIVE’s opinion page that marked the country’s 250th anniversary. Granted, the Constitution came several years after the Declaration of Independence, but the document is the bedrock that supports all the laws of the land. It established the structure and powers of a federal government.

Falce is the community engagement editor for TribLIVE, the digital news platform published by Trib Total Media in western Pennsylvania. Her series goes beyond the best-known amendments. It’s a look at every amendment, with expert sourcing from local institutions. Some of the amendments may not seem relevant today, but they all played an important part in the “Constitution Under Construction,” which is what Falce named her column.

She used building metaphors to make the Constitution’s amendments easier to understand. The Eighth Amendment, for example, functions like a building code for the justice system. Excessive bail or fines are not allowed. No cruel or unusual punishments. But it requires an “implied measure of proportionality,” as one of Falce’s sources, Quinn Cozzens of the Abolitionist Law Center, put it.

In another column, Falce wrote that the 14th Amendment, which addresses citizenship, “rebuilt the framework that had been America for generations.” This amendment illustrated how the Constitution could change, much as buildings can be remodeled.

“A big part of it has been partnering with some leaders, some real experts from our region, on what these amendments meant and how they came about — people who could really talk us through aspects that we didn’t really understand. So, we have talked with law professors, we’ve talked with defense lawyers. We’ve talked with prosecutors. For the Eighth Amendment, we talked with some people from nonprofits who have been working on things like cruel and unusual punishment, the death penalty and things like that. So, we've gotten some great voices in there. We did the interviews live on video, and we put those online so that people could see the whole conversation.”

The feedback has been amazing, she said.

“As an opinion editor, I usually consider something to be really successful … if I get opposition from both sides. But that’s because I’ve never had a project like this one where the feedback I got has been uniformly supportive from all sides of the political spectrum.”

TribLIVE Editor Luis Fábregas praised Falce for making the complexities of the Constitution easier to understand. “She found a creative way to explain not just how our Constitution has changed over time, but why those changes matter today,” Fábregas said. “That’s a tremendous service to readers, especially at a time when so much of our national conversation revolves around constitutional questions.

“What impressed me most about this project was the thought and creativity she brought to every installment. She didn’t just give readers a history lesson. She challenged them to think about how our democracy works. That’s journalism at its best.”

Falce said it’s important for all Americans to know their history, and that can come from a newspaper. “You should never neglect your opinion page,” she said. “You’re going to find important things there.”

Bob Miller has spent more than 25 years in local newsrooms, including 12 years as an executive editor with Rust Communications. Bob also produces an independent true crime investigative podcast called The Lawless Files.