Ask your friends, family members and co-workers where they think American freedom comes from and why it has endured for more than 200 years. They would probably cite the “freedom of speech,” “freedom of the press,” “the right to bear arms.” Or perhaps they might look toward the right to “be secure … against unreasonable search and seizure” or to a “speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.”

Those are the answers Justice Antonin Scalia said he would typically hear in response to that question, which he put to the New Jersey chapter of the Federalist Society a little more than one year ago. But those answers, which are pulled from the Bill of Rights, are wrong, Scalia told audience members. That’s because it is the structure of the U.S. Constitution itself, and not the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, that secures American freedom, he said.