Classes in Criminal Procedure: Investigation and Criminal Procedure: Adjudication are of course constitutional law… we just smartly don’t title them as such to keep our colleagues from wishing to teach them. Thus, at some point in some discussion, a student raises whether we ought to amend our federal Constitution to fix some particularly vexing issue, at which point we remind students of the reality. That isn’t happening. We just don’t do it. Good idea or no – doesn’t much matter. It’s just too hard, what with needing 2/3 of both houses of Congress and then 3/4 of all state legislatures (among equivalently-hard alternatives). Hasn’t happened since 1992. Which was a great year for graduating high school—the best, incidentally—but otherwise a year that doesn’t especially commend itself. And that was finally adopting a proposal from… September 25, 1789. At that rate, our best idea might become constitutional somewhere around the year 2225. So, yeah, just not gonna happen.
And indeed, if one pages through what our Representatives suggest as constitutional Amendments, it reads like a list of ‘not gonna happen.’ A balanced budget. A federal debt limit. Repealing the Sixteenth Amendment. Limiting the Presidential pardon. Allowing sixteen-year-olds to vote. Term limits for Congress.
So, here’s my plug: yes it is extremely difficult to amend our Constitution. And yes that was purposeful, and probably Burkean smart (just take a look at what happens with state constitutions that run otherwise). Still, amendment would be easier if we got used to it. Grease the wheels through recent experience.
Thus, let’s take the dumbest provision in our Constitution and fix it. Doesn’t matter what it is, so long as the change is not substantively harmful… because the point is to learn to do this thing, so we could collectively do it again for something more important.
My vote? Requiring the President be “a natural born Citizen.” What’s your pick? What’s the most likely thing for which we could get the required fractions to agree? What’s the lowest-hanging fruit?
Leave a Reply