The U.S. Constitution: "America is in danger ... of becoming something of a legal backwater"

this nyt article makes explicit what has been too long left unsaid - the u.s. constitution no longer serves us well...

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards, and they are frozen in amber. As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.” (Yugoslavia used to hold that title, but Yugoslavia did not work out.)

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years. By odd coincidence, Thomas Jefferson, in a 1789 letter to James Madison, once said that every constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because “the earth belongs always to the living generation.” These days, the overlap between the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and those most popular around the world is spotty.

my deepest desire, if only a cherished fantasy, is to see the u.s. convene a constitutional convention... at least the subject is at last being broached...

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