Good article, appreciated the charts, though the commentary on them seemed a bit selective. I was disappointed though that the case wasn't made for the actual cause of the recent unamendability (since 1971, as they say). Why did opposition to abortion make ALL amendments unpassable?
The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#72It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn. I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Con…
>"Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted." I feel like the author is looking at using amendments as a way to implement legislation that is permanent. Our Federal constitution is fairly concise, whereas some…
Our Federal constitution is fairly concise
Concise to the point of vacuous. It says practically nothing. It describes only the barest outlines of government, and effectively all of the actual implementation has been a matter of legislation, judicial decisions, and tradition. Individual words are scrutinized as if they will somehow be unambiguous if we stare at them long enough, or bring in enough cherry-picked outside context.
The section on the courts is especially hilariously short. It basically says "We should have one". Everything after that -- included the vaunted ability of the Supreme Court to "interpret the constitution", is a matter of them deciding that it was something they were going to do and everybody else going along with it.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#73Anyone who advocates for making the constitution more amendable should find a group to sit down and play a game of Nomic[1] until completion. It is the fastest way to internalize the meta-strategy around making it easier or more difficult to make amendments. Is there a disconnect between the current political ruleset[constitution] and the way the political game is played? Yes, but probably not for the reasons you think.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't even intend for a party system to take hold
Famously the original presidential election rules don't really work in the face of partisanship and President-VP tickets and they quickly were replaced.
> Famously the original presidential election rules don't really work in the face of partisanship and President-VP tickets and they quickly were replaced.
Arguably, the main problem with the original rules was bullet voting in the electoral college; if they voted with preference ballots with winner elimination, instead of bullet ballots, having the second place be the VP would work well, and produce less incumbent protection even with an equally strong party system than the actual replacement system of separate election, which produced President-VP tickets.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#75At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.
When one side wants things to change and the other side wants things to "stay the same" (in order to deconstruct them), the current state of affairs is one side having the upper hand. The US founding fathers were so worried about a tyranny of the majority they built a system where a tyranny of the minority was likely to come to pass.
> When one side wants things to change and the other side wants things to "stay the same"
You've misdescribed the sides. Most of the time in the US, one side wants to impose something on everyone and the other side doesn't want to be imposed on. Maybe the root of the problem is the idea that the only way to have "change" is to impose your views on everyone.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember reading about "factions" in the Federalist papers and I have a feeling that the Founding Fathers knew such partisanship was bound to arise. And indeed, it arose very early during George Washington's presidency. I don't think the development of political parties would have caught them by surprise, especially because many of them wound up joining them as time went on.
Federalist 10 describes factions as the nature of man, explains why they don't belong in government, and describes how the Constitution limits the sway of factions. But, the Founding Fathers never envisioned it would be possible to coordinated across a continent in real time. Rapid communication allows factions/parties to have continental spread. https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-...
> Federalist 10 describes factions as the nature of man, explains why they don't belong in government, and describes how the Constitution limits the sway of factions.
Unfortunately, its claims in this regard were proven false not much more than a decade after it was published.
*> the Founding Fathers never envisioned it would be possible to coordinated across a continent in real time.
This would be a valid argument if factions did not become central to US politics until rapid communication became available. But that's not the case. Factions were already central to US politics by 1800, when the fastest mode of communication was horseback.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
No rational person gives a damn what some guys who died 200 years ago would have thought about our present.
No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by random luck.
> No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by randon luck
Yes, to the extent that the US had more peace and prosperity than, say, European states, most intelligent people with even modest knowledge attribute that not to random chance but to three major factors:
(1) The Pacific Ocean, (2) The Atlantic Ocean, (3) The extremely small number of remotely near-peer powers that have ever existed not separated from the US by (1) or (2).
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.
As somebody not from the US, the mainstream "left" seems very right wing. When compared to the rest of the world, there is no left wing political party in the United States.
Wow, please give some examples.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#79"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…
> It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2…
> If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress.
True in the very short term, but that's only because neither party really targets the popular vote. Both would realign their platform and bases accordingly, and we'd just end up with a new system with new flaws.
However, if you are correct, that would mean a de facto one-party state. That's downright frightening to me, even if I am a member of that party.
Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted." I feel like the author is looking at using amendments as a way to implement legislation that is permanent. Our Federal constitution is fairly concise, whereas some…
Our Federal constitution is fairly concise Concise to the point of vacuous. It says practically nothing. It describes only the barest outlines of government, and effectively all of the actual implementation has been a matter of legislation, judicial decisions, and tradition. Individual words are scrutinized as if they will somehow be unambiguous if we stare at them long enough, or bring in enough cherry-picked outsid…
I don't think this is true. For instance, compare US defamation law to UK defamation law. The distinctions, which are large, are entirely because of the structure of our constitution. Or look at the rules of evidence in Europe, where you don't necessarily have a right to avoid self-incrimination, or to exclude evidence gained unlawfully.