Parlour Game: Rewrite The Constitution

Or how about some new amendments? What's the current tally on errors in the original doc?

A Greek friend e mailed me that he'd forwarded my latest essay (which describes the Enlightenment as 'an unfinished project') to his college supervisor, who remarked: 'The Enlightenment was always understood as partial. There is plenty of evidence of that. And the Enlightenment never even reached many countries (including England - although it was strong in Scotland)'.

I'd never thought about that, but it's true. While England had scientists like Newton, economists like Adam Smith, and lexicographers like Dr Johnson, it always mistrusted people who put those elements together into a big Theories of Everything, political or utopian projects for humanity. England never really had 18th Century theorists of personal liberty on the scale of David Hume, Thoreau or Diderot.

What about Locke and Mill, the Utilitarians? I'll have to look them up, can't remember much about them.

I can see how this sort of made sense at the time, actually -- the obvious fear being that European aristocracy would come over, wow the yokels with their book-learning and post-feudal splendor, and render the entire revolution useless. Seems almost like an attempt by the framers to say, "We put a lot of effort into this thing, so you idiots can't just give it back as soon as we hit a rough spot."

And then we let our homegrown aristocrats, with their own delusions of "dynasty," take power. Which is one precisely of the things I find so offensive about the Bush Family, all of whom have this overweening sense of entitlement that is, quite frankly, un- American. And then there are those around these days who have adopted, almost lock-stock-and-barrel, the arguments of the anti- Federalists, who opposed the Constitution (ironically, they call themselves the Federalists these days, but I digress).

I got one of my best law school grades in Constitutional Law, yet I'm at a loss to recommend any books on the Constitution that would make sense to non-lawyers. The Princeton historian Gordon Wood is generally excellent on that period and his take on the Constitution is pretty interesting. Another good one, although more legalistic and mostly concerned with the development of judicial review (i.e., how the U.S. Supreme Court reviews cases and the legal issues therein), is John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust. Kermit Hall's The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court is also really good -- it explains not only the history of the Supreme Court and gives bios on the Supreme Court justices, but also explains key cases and concepts in Constitutional Law that I think would be pretty understable for a layperson.

The (non-revolutionary) left seem to think it beneath their dignity or something. As a result, the constitution is ever more skewed away from their world, and they are mere infants when it comes to discussing it.

Alexander Cockburn did write a column (Chronicles of Nutty Leftism, maybe two yrs ago?) attacking Daniel Lazare's proposal that the left work for the overthrow of the US Constitution (on the grounds that it was an intrinsically Rightwing Tool). But AC is an exception to left orthodoxy in many ways (can write, has a sense of humour, is not rendered immobile by US working class populism, actually really genuinely likes many things abt America).

I don't know if I quite understand what you are saying here, mark. I don't know if you mean that the Left isn't expert in the Constitution out of sheer ignorance of it, or out of ideology. If the former, I think that has more to do with the inadequacies of American education, particularly that the Constitution not really being taught in school (when I went to high school, we didn't have Civics classes, which apparently they did have at some point in the past but no more). If it's that, that would be society-wide. If the latter -- I don't know, would that be an extension of postmodernism? There are a number of liberal/left advocacy groups over here -- the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, the National Lawyers Guild -- that are often quite knowledgeable about the Constitution. Those groups aren't flawless -- the ACLU is officially non-partisan (as it should be, since its mission is to protect Constitutional protections regardless of ideology) -- but they do exist. There are also no small number of liberal/left Constitutional scholars -- folks like Laurence Tribe, Akhil Reed Amar, Erwin Chemerinsky, maybe even Alan Dershowitz (though he's not a Constitutional scholar per se).

I think part of the problem, too, has to do with educating people about the various legal doctrines in Constitutional law. Laypeople don't have to be as conversant as lawyers as far as that goes, but I think it's still important for them to have an understanding of those. For instance, to understand the Commerce Clause (which is the underpinning of the American regulatory state, among other things), the Incorporation Doctrine (that the Fourteenth Amendment "incorporates" the Bill of Rights, so that the federal government can stop state governments from restricting rights arising therefrom), or methods of constitutional interpretation (e.g., textualism, dynamism, interpretivism).

a recent US navy recruitment commercial ended with "life, liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them"

The bolivarian constitution could be relevant, especially the alter globalization angle. I know young people here are interested in sovereignty as long as it is concerned with bridging the gap between global problems and global solutions, so I'll make sure to bring up ideas of the Simultaneous Policy when I'll feel ready to talk publicly at a sovereignty council.

life, liberty, and the outlawing of abortion, gay marriage, women in the workplace, church/state separation, and budget deficits?

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2017/09/09/article-v-constitutional-convention-planners-convene-in-arizona/618218001/

It would be nice to abolish the electoral college and move election days from Tuesdays to weekends, but that would only require an amendment, not a full rewrite.

Come to think of it, a thorough housecleaning of the entire election process, liberalizing and standardizing election law and ballot access across the nation, would probably be A Good Thing. I'm not enough of a constitutional scholar to know right off if that would also require one or more amendments or if it could be done legislatively.

But rewriting the Constitution at this late date wouldn't expunge our sorry history, or erase its worst legacies in any timely fashion. And all the most necessary reforms could be handled through ordinary legislation, not Constitutional means.

A group of GOP state legislators spent four days last week in Phoenix outlining how to run a constitutional convention that would pave the way for new amendments mandating a balanced budget and possibly congressional term limits / / / and outlawing abortion, making English the official language, Christianity the official religion, eliminating LGBTQ rights, making flag worship mandatory, funding the military and nothing else, replacing e pluribus unum with "Fuck you, I've got mine!", reinstating debtors' prisons, and myriad other truly anti-American neo-feudal MAGAzine subscriptions : )

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/351204-gop-state-lawmakers-meet-to-plan-possible-constitutional-convention