The Road Not Taken

Why has the United States Constitution changed so little during the past two hundred years? While society, economy, and government itself changed a great deal, not so the formal statement of powers and prerogatives that legitimates the national government's form and functioning. Much of the ongoing liberal-conservative debate over government has been rooted in uncertainty over the constitutional limits of opportunity and obligation. However, even moments of partisan triumph have seldom led to efforts to reduce the ambiguity of the document. Why has the American political system shied away from one of 1787's significant innovations, Article V, the provision for amending the Constitution by specified and not impossibly difficult procedures? Article V was born amid talk of the right of revolution against unsatisfactory government and consciousness of the value of providing a constitutional alternative to rebellion. That useful alterations will be suggested by experience could not but be foreseen, explained James Madison in The Federalist, No. 43. was requisite, therefore, that a mode for introducing them should be provided. The mode preferred by the convention seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards equally against that extreme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable; and that extreme difficulty, which might perpetuate its discovered faults.1 With Article V, the Founding Fathers acknowledged that their crea

Amendment · Constitution · Constitutional amendment · Constitutional review · First amendment · Political science · Supreme court · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Legal and Constitutional Studies · Legal Systems and Judicial Processes

• Judicial Review in New Democracies

  Open Access•T Ginsburg•Judicial Review in New Democracies•2003

  Incluir item

• The Collapse of Constitutional Originalism and the Rise of the Notion of the “Living Constitution” in the Course of American State-Building

  Open Access•Howard Gillman•Studies in American Political…•1997

  Incluir item

• The Law “Justice Under the Constitution, Not Over It”

  Open Access•William D Blake•Presidential Studies Quarterly•2019

  Incluir item

• A Switch in Time Saves Nine

  Open Access•Jamie L Carson, Benjamin A Kleinerman•Public Choice•2002

  Incluir item

• Altiero Spinelli and the Idea of the US Constitution as a Model for Europe

  Open Access•Andrew Glencro, Andrew Glencross•JCMS Journal of Common Market…•2009

  Incluir item