Constitution, Schmonstitution

[razors edge]

Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen Looks At Suggestions For Dumping The Document

Suddenly, the most sacred text in America is under attack from all sides. The Constitution was never meant to be a "suicide pact," says eminent judge and author Richard Posner. It's "undemocratic," says University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson. In this time of terror we need a new one — an "emergency Constitution" — says Yale Law School guru Bruce Ackerman. And Richard Labunski, in his fine and timely book about James Madison, pretty much destroys the myth that the Founding Fathers were motivated solely by noble impulses when they crafted the new government's guiding light.

These unsettling theses are a measured distance from the roiling debate in legal circles these days over the Constitution's "original intent" and whether it alone should guide constitutional interpretation. That debate is over how the document should be construed by modern jurists. The debate entered into by the literary firm of Posner, Levinson, Ackerman and Labunski is all about whether and to what extent the document itself deserves the legal and political reverence it receives today. During a time of terror, when writers write lofty words about the need for a strong Constitution, the bright men identified above are talking about taking it apart.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/24/opinion/courtwatch/main2117497.shtml

[Kutjara]

1. I doubt the country would survive ten years...

...beyond the wholesale dismantling of the Constitution. Whatever replaced it would be so partisan and aligned to narrow self-interest that it would be a blueprint for division and disintegration.

[annabanana]

2. They are traitors, and profoundly hostile to our country.

They should be excoriated loudly and often for the traitors that they are.

[liberal N proud]

3. Anyone who mentions dismantling or discarding the Constitution should be

tried for treason

[rogerashton]

4. These are overreactions.

I agree that now is not the time to revise the constitution -- since we would only get a totalitarian charter to replace it.

Nevertheless, Levinson is right -- the constitution of 1789, as amended, is still far short of democratic. I have seen (here on this board) a draft of constitutional amendments that would give us a parliamentary system, that I think would be an improvement. At the least I would like a revision of our electoral laws in a majoritarian direction -- when, and if, it is realistic to think that is what we would get.

The amendement process is actually less likely to be perverted, I think, than a new constitutional amendment. Our position should favor amendment, in a majoritarian direction, but oppose any new constitutional convention as a revolutionary act.

[sweetheart]

5. yep, nows not the time, but the first republic is over

http://www.congressin30seconds.com/?mlink=302

[mmonk]

6. "Original intent" is a disinformation campaign

by right-wing ideologues by which they try to force their changes on our system. The word in a nutshell is dangerous.