A discussion of what it takes to amend the US Constitution and how it’s happened in the past.
CNN: You put the 27 amendments into four essential waves. There’s the Bill of Rights amendments, the Reconstruction amendments, this era of progressive amendments and then the Civil Rights era amendments. What era are we in right now?
KOWAL: I would say that we’re at the end of the fourth long dry spell. After the Bill of Rights era it was 61 years before another amendment was added to the Constitution.
And then after the Reconstruction amendments, it was four decades until the progressive amendment era.
And then it was another four decades until the ’60s and the Civil Rights era where there was this permanent change.
As of now, it’s been 50 years. … So if past is prologue, we’re in the what might be the end stages of just the cyclical dry spell. … There are indicators that suggest that in the foreseeable future, not immediate future, but foreseeable future that there could be a dramatic opening for new amendments.
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Long periods of gridlock and closely divided government tend to lead to a frustration that over time forces people to turn to more drastic remedies. When short term change is thwarted, people start to focus on the long term.
If you were to analogize today to another period in history I would look at the period of the late Gilded Age — the late 19th century and early 20th century.
- Then, as now, the country was sharply polarized along regional lines. At that time, it was the East and West versus the heartland. Today, it’s the Red State/Blue State divide. The politics was gridlocked.
- There were many closely fought elections for president.
- Party control of Congress switched every few years throughout that period.
- There were two elections in which the Electoral College delivered the presidency to someone who did not win the popular vote.
The suggested Amendments are:
Electoral College — I think my No. 1 choice would be eliminating the Electoral College and making clear that the people choose our President. The Founders, the Framers, were unwilling to do that in 1787 and many of them thought it was an absurd idea. But the truth is Americans believe that the people should choose.
Equal Rights — Second, I would say the Equal Rights Amendment because next year will be the 100th anniversary of when it was first promulgated…
Supreme Court — Third, I think would be rationalizing our system for selecting Supreme Court justices. The framers talked about judiciary as the weakest branch. They had no idea that it would be as powerful as it is, and they had no idea that people would live so long and stay on the court for 30, 40 years.
Voting — Fourth, I would say is a voting amendment. The framers made a fateful choice: instead of deciding the question of who is eligible to vote, they left it to each state to determine and they use a kind of a rule that sounds outmoded today… What they should have done was to enshrine a universal right to vote as the foundation of a democratic society.
Congressional succession — The fifth one, I think, is a technical one, but it’s one where we’ve not done the smart thing for a long time. It would be an amendment to deal with a flaw in the way we replace members of the House of Representatives…. When a member of the House dies or leaves office, every state using its own system calls a special election that takes months…
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/09/politics/us-constitution-amendments-what-matters/index.html
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