For me looking at the Constitution is probably a lot like what Radio Astronomer experiences when he looks at the night sky, only when I see the complexity, I also see the living, breathing people who made it so.
When I was in college, and even more so when I was in law school, I used to wonder about the people behind the cases and read backwards through the appeals to see what the case was all about, and read legal history to find out what happened to them.
My law professors would laugh at me because the cases were supposed to stand for principles, and the people were not important. After first year, I quit letting people know my proclivities. I think not caring about the people is the reason they are professors, for what it's worth.
Some really good history has been written about legal cases. For example, Gideon's Trumpet, about Gideon vs. Wainwright (Indigent's right to appointed counsel, a great book and an excellent movie starring Henry Fonda as Gideon). Scottsboro, a great book about the Scottsboro boys (tough slogging unless the topic really fascinates you). Amistad was a wonderful movie, although I have read that it wasn't all that historically accurate. It seemed consistent with the legal case, anyway.
To me, Dred Scott isn't just a name. Neither is Brown of Brown vs. Board of Education fame. Neither is Milligan of Ex parte Milligan. Neither is Korematsu. I know the entire history of the Bank of the United States, both of them, and the roles of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Justice Marshall, Andrew Jackson and Justice Taney. I could go on but you get the point. Constitutional law has involved hard fought battles between real men and women made of real flesh and blood over matters of life and death from the beginning.
To say you can pick up the Constitution and understand it just by reading it is as charming as a child insisting that Polaris is always the North Star and the moon is made of green cheese.
Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?