[On December
6, 1865, the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. So this week I’ve
AmericanStudied that crucial amendment and four others, leading up to this weekend
post on three potential amendments to come!]
On three ways
the Constitution should probably be further amended (and by “should,” I want to
be clear that I’m only talking about potential changes I support here!).
1)
The
ERA: I already wrote about the ERA as part of Wednesday’s post on the 19th
Amendment, and of course that’s the thing with the ERA—it’s not at all new,
having spent nearly five
decades now languishing in limbo after passing both Houses of Congress in
1972. Yet far from making it less of a potential future amendment, I would
argue that that history makes the ERA the next amendment that should be
ratified and added to the Constitution. Frankly, it is entirely ridiculous that
this straightforwardly equitable amendment (one that simply validates and
reinforces the “All men are created equal” sentiment on which the nation was
founded) has not been added long since, and that it’s apparently controversial
enough to have stalled for so long. But there’s no time like the present, and
what better way to inaugurate the centennial of suffrage than to finally pass
the ERA?
2)
The Electoral College: I really do believe that
the ERA should be as non-controversial as an amendment can get, but I fully recognize
that my 2nd and 3rd subjects for today are and will
always be far more divisive. While the Constitution did many things, at its
core it created the American form of democratic process and governance—and one
core element of the process part was the creation of the
electoral college as a system for electing the executive. Yet the way in
which that system operates was significantly shifted by the
12th Amendment, reminding us that every aspect of the
Constitution is and must be living
and changeable. Moreover, there’s just no way to conflate what populous/less
populous or large/small states meant in 1787 with what they mean in 2019, when
(for example) California has a population of nearly 40 million and Wyoming a
population of just over 500,000. To my mind, electors (however they are
distributed) cannot possibly represent the will of those populations and
individuals sufficiently, and an amendment to create some form of popular
voting is necessary if the US government is ever again to reflect the American
people.
3)
Guns: The same historical vs. contemporary point
certainly applies here: while there are various ways to read and interpret the
2nd Amendment’s tortured grammar, the bottom line is that what “arms”
meant in 1789 has precious little (if anything) to do with the weapons of war that
have been decimating our communities and nation over the last decade. But to be
honest, even if there were some way to teleport to the 1780s and we learned
that George
Mason and company intended for every American to be able to carry around a
personal bazooka or some such, I would argue that the more important point is
this: the amendment process was created precisely so the Constitution can
evolve to address a continually evolving society. The Framers understood well
that America in any future moment would look different from theirs, and
designed this vital part of the Constitution in order to allow it to grow and
shift along with the nation. In the 21st century, both guns and America
have evolved to a point where our gun culture has to change if we are to continue
moving toward that more perfect union promised by the Constitution—and since
the 2nd Amendment exists, any significant such change will require
its own amendment as well.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Amendments you’d predict or argue for?
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