24 July 2019

Some Things The U.S. Constitution Gets Wrong

The United States Constitution is not holy. Indeed, it is a seriously flawed document, the "M.S. Dos" of the democratic constitutions of the world. 

What are some things that it gets wrong?

1. While most state constitutions and many national constitutions are too easy to amend, the United States Constitution is too hard to amend.

2. Too little thought went into when it should be possible to remove federal elected officials, especially the President, mid-term, and it is too hard to remove the President in the middle of his term.

3. The Second Amendment was a bad idea that few other countries have copied and those that did have since amended out of their constitutions.

4. The Electoral College doesn't work as intended and is fundamentally unfair. The Electoral College, together with the equal representation of U.S. States in the U.S. Senate violates the principle of one man, one vote and would be illegal to adopt in any U.S. state or territory under well established U.S. Constitutional law.

5. The U.S. Constitution does not adequately address the pernicious problem of gerrymandering, or the problems caused by not having proportional representation.

6. The U.S. Constitution does a less than stellar job of handling judicial appointments and errs (for unforeseeable reasons) by giving federal judges tenure for their entire lives.

7. The U.S. Constitution makes it too easy to disenfranchise people.

8. The U.S. Constitution's rules for resolving disputed elections could be much better than the status quo.

9. Insisting that the President be a "natural born citizen" was a bad idea.

10. The U.S. Constitution's allocation of foreign policy and military power is insufficiently clear and has been interpreted badly to come up with bad black letter rules.

11. Diversity jurisdiction was a bad idea.

12. Too many important provisions such as the 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment and the privileges and immunities clause have been inappropriately diminished through judicial interpretation.


4 comments:

neo said...

9. Insisting that the President be a "natural born citizen" was a bad idea.

why ?

it is one way to ensure loyalty to us not a foreign nation.

you didn't mention it also requires age of 35 due to maturity? why not make it 18?

neo said...

" 3. The Second Amendment was a bad idea that few other countries have copied and those that did have since amended out of their constitutions."


what kind of gun regulation do you favor? i could be okay with complete banning of guns provided bad guys also don't have guns. i understand there are nations like japan where this is the case.

since women are routinely raped and murdered, how should they defend themselves from say a home intruder with a weapon?


"4. The Electoral College doesn't work as intended and is fundamentally unfair. The Electoral College, together with the equal representation of U.S. States in the U.S. Senate violates the principle of one man, one vote and would be illegal to adopt in any U.S. state or territory under well established U.S. Constitutional law."

I think it does work as intended. suppose canada were to join the usa, given usa's vastly larger population how would canada's interests be respected? that was the situation when constitution was ratified.

.

6. The U.S. Constitution does a less than stellar job of handling judicial appointments and errs (for unforeseeable reasons) by giving federal judges tenure for their entire lives.


i agree on this point, i think they should be term limited to something like 10-20 years.


one "flaw" in U.S. Constitution is it provides no safe legal way to secede without civil war

Dave Barnes said...

I love the ivy-covered buildings of the Electoral College.
I always become very nostalgic when I walk around the campus.

Anonymous said...

Agree with pretty much of all this, but will comment on the one disagreement, which is the natural born citizen thing.

At the time, the framers wanted to reduce the possibility of a stronger power imposing a puppet head of state, as Russia in fact had just done in Poland, which had an elective monarchy. Like much of their document, the provision is vague almost to the point of uselessness but should be interpreted in that late.

The danger of something like this happening is now remote, but only because the USA is a superpower, and if the country falls from superpower status the provision would again become relevant.