Originalism: be careful what you wish for
I have some questions for those who are clamoring for a strict originalist to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
A little background: in 1973, the Supreme Court famously ruled in Roe v. Wade that states could not outlaw abortion because the Constitution contains a right to privacy that would be violated by such laws. But repealing Roe v. Wade would not automatically outlaw abortion again. It would simply leave that option open to the states.
So here's my first hypothetical for everyone who is a strict originalist: let's say that Roe v. Wade is repealed, and although every state is now free to outlaw abortion, all states defeat proposed laws against it, and actually end up continuing to allow abortion. Would you be satisfied with such a result, since a strict originalist ruling was followed, even though abortion would remain every bit as legal as it is today?
Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 case that established the right to privacy on which the Roe decision relied, concerned the right of married couples to have access to contraception in the state of Connecticut, which had banned contraceptives even for the married. So my next question is this: If an originalist court overruled the right to privacy which had been established in Griswold, and as a result some states passed laws prohibiting access to contraceptives for married couples and actually enforced those laws, what you be satisfied with the result, because a strict originalist ruling had been followed?
These hypotheticals may indeed be exaggerations, but they are certainly not impossibilities. I think they illustrate two things: (a) whether a person really is a champion of originalism or whether that person actually just wants a certain result from application of the doctrine, and (b) some of the possible problems inherent in strict originalism (at least, as I read it).
Personally, I agree with those who think judicial activism and "legislation from the bench" can sometimes represent an overreaching, and that less is often more. But, as with many things, it's a balancing act; sometimes a bit of judicial stretching can be a way to protect our rights from legislative and/or executive overreaching. Would you feel comfortable if states were free to make laws such as the banning of contraceptive devices for married couples? And, if there were no constitutional right to privacy, what would be the legal principle on which such laws might be overruled, if passed? I wonder in particular what the stance of libertarians might be on this?
One further question: do you know that one of the bases for Roe was what could arguably be called an "originalist" interpretation of the word "person" in the US Constitution? The Court found in Roe that fetuses should not be considered "persons" protected with the full rights as such under the Constitution, because at the time of that document's writing, abortion was legal and fetuses were not considered to be persons.
Be careful what you wish for.
[NOTE: I know I said yesterday I was planning to declare a Miers moratorium. Well, this post is close to being about Miers--but it's not. Look, I didn't even mention her name!--until now, anyway.]
posted by neo-neocon @ 11:01 AM
28 comments
28 Comments:
I'm going to have to agree with the Bunnies, although I am pro-life. I think these kinds of issues are best left to legislatures, state or federal (I'm not going to go into the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment on this one).
For an in-depth analysis of the abortion issue, look here for the moral issue and eventually the issue for the courts and here for the more complex issues that would face legislatures were Roe to be overturned.
Sorry for double-posting, but I neglected to mention that overturning Roe would not necessarily constitute overturning the right to privacy. There are other grounds on which to overturn it, for example, stating that the interest of the state in protecting fetuses is simply not outweighed by the mother's right to privacy. However, stare decisis would make this one a little harder to swallow, I think.
Excellent post.
In the end, I believe, abortion as a 'right' will be more influenced by life as defined by science. Fetal viability today is much earlier than it was 10 years ago.
I was struck by a line I heard on a highly rated TV show. A murdered woman is discovered to have been 7 weeks pregnant. One of the 'experts' is gingerly handed the fetus and says, 'It sure doesn't look like a mass of tissue.'
I too, am pro choice (for many reasons, not the least of which is that as a society, we are not prepared for another reality)- that said, when the vast majority of abortions are for contraceptive purposes, I am uncomfortable.
There are far too many abortions- and pretending that abortion is like a teeth cleaning, is denying the truth.
And you wanted to talk about judges...
I wouldn't agree with the outcomes, to be sure. But sometimes the point really is about process. If states refuse to pass laws banning abortion, I can talk to people and try to convince them why abortion is wrong. Right now, it really doesn't matter what the people think. The Empirial counsel has decided.
If the people want to ammend the constitution to permit abortion, lets discuss it. But what has happened now is that we are alergic to ammending the constitution by proper ammendment, but then have courts that declare the constitution "living" which basically means that the SCOTUS is a sitting constitutional convention.
...?
...?
I'm waiting for someone to address the point you made in your last paragraph. I wasn't aware of that.
I think, much like "intelligent design," "strict constructionist" and "originalist" are for many people just stealth concepts, used by religious extremists to mask concepts which are otherwise unpalatable to the American public at large.
The idea that the State would have a compelling interest to force a woman anywhere in this country to carry a pregnancy to term against her will (and maybe even against the best interests of her own health) is perfectly in line with a certain type of religious fascism that we are supposed to be fighting a war against.
Unknown. So the belief is "in line" with a religious fascism.
What if a person comes to the conclusion that abortion is wrong without consulting his or her faith tradition, if any?
Richard:
Then I guess they just shouldn't have one.
neo: So here's my first hypothetical for everyone who is a strict originalist:...
Okay, but here's my hypothetical for everyone who's not a so-called "strict originalist" (which I'm assuming includes you, neo): let's say that the Supreme Court gets packed with certain kinds of evangelical Christians who now happily buy into the notion of a "living costitution" that can be interpreted in light "modern values", "contemporary issues", etc. -- which they, naturally enough, interpret to mean not just that the constitution outlaws abortion (Equal Protection clause) overriding any state or federal attempt to legalize it, but also allows federal laws against the sale of contraceptives (Commerce clause), and maybe even mandates the teaching of creationism (also under Equal Protection, say, with a bit of a reach).
I'm thinking myself that I'd almost like to see something like that happen, though I'm neither an evangelical nor even a conservative, but just to provide a vivid object lesson in the meaning and point of "originalism" as an interpretive principle. After seeing what happens to a "living constitution" when the court is filled with people whose values you don't agree with and don't like, I think maybe even liberals would start to look kindly on elected bodies rather than appointed ones as a means of achieving their policy goals.
One of the problems with abortion via Roe v Wade has been that it has slipped into the healthcare system, and now people get voluntary elected termination of pregnancy. Unfortunately, one has to wonder who exactly pays for that, is there a system that allows people to not pay taxes to health care, or some other government nanny program, based upon their political beliefs?
If not, then leaving the choice to the states, to the the people to be more accurate, is the only just option.
Originalism isn’t so much about results as it is about process. The “Living Constitution” idea starts with the answer to the math problem and works backwards making leaps and jumps as needed to justify the “correct answer” (which is just the judge’s personal opinion). The “Strict Construction” idea believes that you start from the question and work forward until you arrive at whatever idea the legal math dictates.
If you are interested in the Roe decision, you should read The Brethren by Bob Woodward. In it he basically describes the Roe decision coming not from the Constitution but from the fact that the Justices didn’t want to go home to their wives and daughters if they ruled the other way. At the time even Liberal legal scholars did not believe that Roe would have been decided the way it was. The Supreme Court made new law, and not just new law but new Constitutional law out of thin air.
You will notice that every Anglo-Saxon country has legalized abortion (expect Ireland, but that is a different tale; one that involves the voting practices of the EU) without the pains the US went thru. The reason is simple in those countries abortion was legalized by the legislatures. Democracy worked. The pro-life and pro-choice people got to fight it out, compromise and come to an agreement. If one side lost at least they felt they got their say.
In the US, the Supreme Court stopped all debate on the subject. Democracy was overruled. The abortion debate was no longer one where compromise and public voting mattered. It turned into an all-or-nothing game. Hence 30 years of public turmoil. People basically because pissed that they were shut out of Democracy.
The Left also learned that they didn’t have to get 51% of the voting population to agree with their positions. They only had to get 5 people to agree. The Left, based in elitism to start with, no longer had to deal with the dirty proletarians in an election; they could go straight to these philosopher kings in judicial robes.
You see this attempt to protect the Right to Vote (i.e. Democracy) again in the Gay Marriage debate. When the Mass. Supreme Court forced Gay Marriage on the Mass. population, the rest of the country saw the writing on the wall. The population’s right to vote on gay marriage was going to be taken away in the same manner in which they lost the right to vote on abortion. Here in Oregon, I am sure that we would willingly vote in gay marriage (we are currently voting in civil unions), but we passed an Amendment that stopped the OR Supreme Court from taking our right to vote away from us.
The Constitution is a Social Contract, and should e interpreted under standard Contract law. The words in the document matter. “Public use” means public use. And, in the same way the words in the business contract mean what they meant when the document was signed, the words in the Constitution should mean what they meant when the Constitution was signed. If you want the Constitution to evolve, use the Amendment process. We have used that many times in the past.
In know. “But, I never signed the social contract”. There are plenty pf group contracts you may not have signed but are bound by. Do you think only the contracts you personally signed are the ones that bind you at your company? If you really can’t stomach this social contract, and you can’t get it to change via Amendment, leave. If you don’t leave, you have implicitly assented to the social contract.
Also, just because the SC says something is Constitutional doesn’t mean you have to do it. If an anti-abortion law is Constitutional, you are not required to have an anti-abortion law. If the states want to pass abortion laws, that is their right. If you don’t like how a case is decided under Strict Contructionism the Amendment option is always open. Under the Living Constitution model, the judge has already signaled that they are going to ignore the document and the will of the people; so, an Amendment is merely more verbiage they will ignore.
There is a large difference between being pro-life and a Strict Constructionist. On Roe they agree, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
Strict Contructionalism is about allowing the people to decide how they are going to be governed. Conversely, the Living Constitution is about a group of philosopher kings telling us how to live. It is always amused me how anti-democratic Democrats are.
On a slightly different note (hence the new post)
From a political point of view, I would never want Roe overturned. It is too useful of a tool to beat the Dems over the head with. Reps can make promises and know that they don’t have to fulfill them thanks to Roe. Dems on the other hand, are forced to make loonier and loonier promises and nothing stops them. In fact, the MoveOn/NOW crowd demand them. Partial birth abortions, a-OK. Full birth abortions, well it is a women’s right to choose. How about a 4th term abortion?
Roe keeps the pro-life logical extremes from reality, while it does nothing to stop the pro-abortion forces logical extremes.
Plus, while I believe abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty are all ultimately that taking of a life, on balance, I am OK with all three. And the fact that the Dems are aborting away their future voters is a plus.
From a legal point of view Roe is a cancerous abomination and should be removed before it finishes metastasizing and kills democracy in this country.
The problem with Roe isn’t abortion, it is the acceptance that the Supreme Court can sit as an unchecked Constitutional Convention.
BTW, funny how the “the court is part of the checks and balances” people never seem to support Congresses impeachment check on the Court.
Strict Constructionalism doesn’t mean you dislike Checks and Balances. It just means you also support the Separation of Powers.
I wanted to mention an experience I had leading up to the 2004 election. A couple of my friends said that one of the many reasons they were voting for Kerry was that if Bush were to be re-elected, he would appoint people to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. When I asked what they thought that would actually mean in terms of a policy change, some of them said it would mean abortion would be outlawed. When I explained the actual legal situation to them--that the right would revert to the states, and that I doubted most states would outlaw abortion, and thus there would not be a huge change in the practical sense--I don't think they quite believed me. And they seemed surprised that I wasn't particularly upset at the prospect.
I tend to be more originalist than not in terms of my own preferences for the court. I think, however, that at least some originalists are more interested in outcome than process, and if the outcome were to be one they didn't like, they'd chuck the originalism soon enough (no one on this thread, of course!).
I also think that, originalism or no, justices do in fact decide cases based at least partly on their prior biases. There is simply no way to avoid it, because words are always open to interpretation, and there are always ambiguities as to what the framers meant, and people fill them in with their biases.
Wasn't there a case recently where a boyfriend was asked by his girlfirend to kick her in the stomach as to induce abortion, the male was charged for murder and sent to prison while the female was protected under Roe vs. Wade.
I find it odd that a law of the land provides an impregnated female with absolute protection under the law while another is given no equal protection,choice or decision in the matter. Of course, to further the crazy logic supporting Roe vs. Wade is that this absolute protection under the law occurs in a limited time-frame of around nine months yet the moment the baby moves through the birth canal the female then has the right to sue the male for child support. Either the male receives rights to his sperm or he doesn't, moving through the birth canal should not alter his protection. Seems to me if a female is given complete protection to choose whether to continue the pregnancy or whether to abort she must then assume total responsibility for her decision either way. In possessing such a right doesn't she also assume all the burdens associated with reproduction?
Doesn't Constituional right to Equal Protection Under the Law allow the males to receive the same protection? Why is it a fetus for Her but a human being for Him. The problem I have with the abortion movement's pro-choice logic is that protection under the law is gender specific and falls in a specific time frame.
The conflict with Roe vs Wade is that it's not based upon ideals found in a democracy and is polluting the body politic with its irrational justifications.
Morally I don't believe it a healthy cultural practice but if this issue were properly legislated into law I would uphold the law. Crazy or not.
I'd be tickled pink if both Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. CT were overturned. Because it's the right thing to do according to the Constitution. It wouldn't bother me in the least if some state made contraceptives illegal for married couples because it's the states' right to do so. And it's the people's right to kick the idiots out for passing such a stupid law.
The closer accountability is to the people, the more the people control the process. In the end, the people are served, and that's what I want from the federal government - power to the people.
neo: I also think that, originalism or no, justices do in fact decide cases based at least partly on their prior biases. There is simply no way to avoid it, because words are always open to interpretation, and there are always ambiguities as to what the framers meant, and people fill them in with their biases.
Sure they do. But the point (as I see it) is that it makes a difference whether judges believe that they have an obligation to respect the intent of a law, or if they believe that they have both the ability and the moral right to
include not just original intentions, but also historical circumstances, foreign judgments, changing mores, or what have you. Even give agreement on the former position, some people will still make mistakes, or differ over interpretations -- and some will just be unscrupulous, careless, or indifferent. But they'll no longer be able to hide behind hand-waving about a so-called "living constitution".
Holmes: agreed!
Carol Herman, here. Roe is in a safe harbor. It's more than 30 years old. And, Rehnquist's court fielded 3 attempts at overturning it. And, didn't.
Among republican politicians, Roe is like Social Security. The party that takes it away is the party that frizzles itself on the 3rd rail.
Also, in Orwell, he writes that all governments exist between two poles. And, the pendulum swings. Here, in America, I think, we've gone through out "liberal" period; and we're heading towards conservatism. But not religious zealotry. As to the Christians who vote their faith; it's well to remember they voted Jimmy Carter into office in 1976. And, they abandoned the republican party. It's not as if you think that the base were all that devoted.
On the other hand, say all you will about moonbats. They vote for the democratic ticket; hook, line and sinker. Fewer of them now? Yup. That's because the republicans have found ways to add voters to their roster. As long as they don't let big business frighten too many customers away. And, of the remaining customers, when the religious right starts off in tongues; or talks about rapture; more than half the audience just goes home.
By the way, in 2004, Dan Rather disgusted so many people, it's been said 4-or-5-million more Americans cast votes for Bush than would have happened if C-BS did not involve itself in fraud.
Do I have a dream ticket for 2008? You bet. Chenney/Guiliani. And, to get there the president has to freeze off the loonier requests that flood out of his base. Can he do it, you ask? Sure. He's got the guts to do what's best for the whole country. While the base really isn't all that empowered ... because how many of them are out there, elected to office?
The Supreme Court looked ripe to them, because it would have given them 1/3 of the government, with appointments for life. But it would have killed the republican party.
This thread has split into several issues, with the common link to the abortion debate. But first, a pet peeve: If you're against abortion, don't have one is, to many, morally analogous to If you're against slavery, don't own one.
In essence, a state outlawing abortion is making use of it's authority and power to protect a helpless class of people. It is identical in concept with other child protection laws which law special requirements on adults/parents/guardians concerning children. (Requiring an able person to feed a child until other provisions can be made is similar to requiring a mother to carry a child to term so that other provisions can be made for it.)
Mixing in the "right of privacy" is misleading. For the Federal government, that right is guaranteed in Amendments Nine & Ten. As far as the Federal government is concerned, it has no constitutional power to abrogate that right.
The various states are another matter. Holmes pointed out the expansion of the U.S. constitution to the extent that state constitutions (and laws) are mere codicils to the Big One. That should not be the case, under an originalist construction.
Evenso, many of the state constitutions have some equivalent to a Bill of Rights, and there may well be a state right to privacy. Thus, as many have noted, this should be a State, not Federal, matter.
The "right to privacy" is a bit vague in any event. Does it include...
- Contraception?
- Shaking a baby in the privacy of your own bedroom?
- Luring a stray cat into your home for a bit of vivisection?
- Homosexual erotic behavior?
- The use of hot cigarettes as a form of punishing a baby for crying?
- Cockfighting?
- ...?
These examples suggest a principle concerning a right to privacy, namely that it does not include the right to behavior which harms a more helpless human being. (Some would extend this to animals totally; others would add humane arguments.)
Which brings us back to abortion. In essence, outlawing abortion protects a helpless class of people: unborn children. It burdens people with a positive responsibility to protect the child until such time as the protection duty can be turned over to someone else.
Or so it seems to me.
Generally I'm a very strict originalist.
"So here's my first hypothetical for everyone who is a strict originalist: let's say that Roe v. Wade is repealed, and although every state is now free to outlaw abortion, all states defeat proposed laws against it, and actually end up continuing to allow abortion. Would you be satisfied with such a result, since a strict originalist ruling was followed, even though abortion would remain every bit as legal as it is today?"
Yes, I would be satisfied. To use a current hard example the Schiavo case - I didn't like the outcome but it was perfectly within the states right to do so. It's what happens when you recognise thier right to do so. Same as with all of our freedoms - free speech means the KKK and Black Panthers can exist and say what they want even though I think they are corrupt and a blight on this planet.
"So my next question is this: If an originalist court overruled the right to privacy which had been established in Griswold, and as a result some states passed laws prohibiting access to contraceptives for married couples and actually enforced those laws, what you be satisfied with the result, because a strict originalist ruling had been followed?"
Sort of a straw man (I don't think you meant it as one). The "right to privacy" isn't where this one fails. For one, the decision quotes the first, third, fourth, and ninth as being taken together make that law unconstitutional - and I would agree (well, except the third - ti doesn't apply). Where they went wrong is ennumerating it as "new constitutional right", there was never and is still not this mystical new right. Abortion breaks down in that those amendments do *not* cover it, only this new one that suddenly sprung up can be interpreted to mean such (especially given that there is no text to clarify the right it can mean anything the justices wanted - and is preciesly why it was used).
"if there were no constitutional right to privacy, what would be the legal principle on which such laws might be overruled"
Too broad a question. Would need a case by case question. For much of it I would guess the fourth amendment (the "search" part of "search and seizure"). But it would depend on your specific example. In many cases the first and 9'th would also work.
"do you know that one of the bases for Roe was what could arguably be called an "originalist" interpretation of the word "person" in the US Constitution? The Court found in Roe that fetuses should not be considered "persons" protected with the full rights as such under the Constitution, because at the time of that document's writing, abortion was legal and fetuses were not considered to be persons."
Don't confuse rationalisation with being an originalist interpretation. with enough of that you can "prove" nearly anything and is the basis of much of the "legislation from the bench". From a certain point of view it can be said that the first amendment only applies to govt approved press, the second only to the govt sponsered/controlled military, that the third amendment allows law to supercede soldiers taking your home anytime, the fourth is a collective right and not an individual, in the fith everyone was milita then and murder is a time of "public danger", and I could go on for each. Each one of them would have basis is what is technically written, just clever wordplay is required to change what they mean (also what I call "mental mastrubation").
Plus, you do realise that a strict originalist also sees the constitution as changable/mutable - there is a whole section of it describing how. There are quite a few decisions I like the outcome but greatly fear the damage it will do as time goes on due to thier reasoning.
I used to think that originalists did not want to see legislature from the bench but after their over the top reaction to Meirs I think they just want to control the court. In other words they want to decide what is and is not legislated.
Most hard core prolifers I know will not accept the decision of the state any more than they did Roe v. Wade, unless it is the decision they want.
And if it was as simple as just allowing the state legislatures to make laws there would not need to be a Supreme Court. The very fact that it exists tells us that people interpret the same words differently and that the founding fathers saw the need for an independent judiciary.
Slavery is a good example. The states did not make slavery illegal, a war and a war president did.
If the Supreme Court had decided the other way in the Dred Scott decision do any of us believe that the mind of one southern slave owner would have been changed?
Judge Robert Bork actually invented the theory of "originalism"-- trying to figure out through historical research what the Founding Father meant when they wrote the words in the Constitution, and sticking to that definition as closely as possible.
Such an approach precludes discoveries of "new" constitutional rights that appear nowhere in the text of the Constitution.
Few conservatives are ready to go as far as Bork, but they do advocate, like Scalia, for a "dead" Constitution, meaning one that doesn't change with the whims of the current Justices, some of whom advocate for a "living" Constitution, meaning one whose meaning shifts arounds like a weathervane as the current Justices sees fit.
As for Roe v. Wade, I'm a New Yorker. Abortion was legal in New York years before Roe was decided, and if Roe were repealed tomorrow, female New Yorkers would retain their right to abort their unborn children. To change that, I'd have to lobby the state legislature successfully. (I happen to believe that very few states would outlaw abortion, given the current political climate). We live in a country where some legal rules differ from state to state, and create a diverse legal environment. That's healthy, because it enables different states to experiment with different social policies, and for the nation as whole to compare the outcomes of those differing policy choices.
The most important point is that most policy decisions belong in the hands of our elected legislatures, not in the hands of the Justices, who should be enforcing those policy decisions unless constitutional rights are at stake.
If you think rights should be added to the Constitution, then amend it, as the Framers intended.
I know I'm repeating what others have said, but it's worth echoing.
I'm absolutely confident that I would be happy with an originalist SCOTUS. While I might not like the decisions that they hand down, ***it is not the job of the judiciary to make decisions that I like or dislike***. It is their job to uphold the constitution. I repeat for the dense: the judiciary is NOT there to satisfy "right and wrong" or decide how things should work or move us in any direction. They only exist to ensure we abide by the constitution. They are the referees. Say that aloud. They make sure we play by the rules.
Congress is the ball team. If the *people* don't like something, they talk to their representatives who manipulate laws and if necessary add amendments (say specifically giving us a right to privacy). The legislature is responsible for effecting change. Period. Nobody else.
Freedom and our constitution aren't painless processes folks. Like capitalism, democracy takes time to work and can be slow. The benefit is that the system gives people the freedom to make their own mistakes. Freedom.
I pray for the day when our federal government steps back and the states take back the power given to them by the constitution. Today, we elect representatives from far away cities who decide much of what happens in our country. If the meat of decision making was local, I suspect that issues would become more important than the "which devil do I hate less" or "who embodies my philosophy more" discussions we have today. I look forward to the day issues become more important than appearances. Maybe it'll never happen, but I hope it does.
Cheers,
Duckman
Yes, I would still support original interpretation. I think the Constitution means what it says. I am not opposed to change and I understand that there can and should be changes over time, which the founders allowed for. I understand and support things like equal rights for all (voting, etc) where modern day interpretation clearly warrants change, but the Supreme Court and Congress lost their way a long time ago and needs to be pulled back towards original interpretation.
I don't care at all about abort specifically, though I think Roe vs. Wade was an awful decision that set an awful precedent.
I care about a court that's been stepping over the Constitution, even using foreign law to supercede it, in order to rationalize racial preferences, CFR, and other pieces of disastrous and unconstitutional pieces of legislation.
The first time Bush ran I voted for Gore & I don’t remember Bush’s campaign promises. The second time I voted for Bush but had my ear cocked mostly for WOT campaign pronouncements & can remember little else. What I’m driving at is: Has Bush ever promised to nominate SCOTUS candidates that would be guaranteed to overturn Roe versus Wade? I keep reading how constructionists feel betrayed because Bush promised this & promised that but I can’t recall any such promises.
I am not knowledgeable about Constitutional legal issues but if enough citizens are anti-abortion it would seem that an amendment is called for. An amendment forbidding abortion would make Presidential choice of SCOTUS nominees & SCOTUS opinion regarding abortion a moot question, wouldn’t it? I’m wondering why anti-abortionists haven’t tried this route. There are already 17 amendments passed after the Bill of Rights. That’s quite a few considering the young age of the nation & the genius within the original document – on average a new amendment about every 13 years(2005 – 1787 = 218 years divided by 17 amendments = 12.8).
"That’s quite a few considering the young age of the nation & the genius within the original document – on average a new amendment about every 13 years(2005 – 1787 = 218 years divided by 17 amendments = 12.8)."
I don't think so. If you look at how many were passed earlier, and how many were passed recently, I think you will see that it gets harder and harder.
Anonymous said: “I don't think so. If you look at how many were passed earlier, and how many were passed recently, I think you will see that it gets harder and harder.
Is it really “harder”? Has the amendment process, which is the same as when the Constitution was written, become somehow “harder”? Or is it that needed adjustments to the document, such as the issue of slavery, having been made by amendment, leave fewer pressing issues to trigger the amendment process?
Post a Comment
<< Home