This site is dedicated to proposals for constitutional reform, calls for a new constitutional convention, and debunking popular misconceptions about the current constitution.
While the site will obviously host my own proposals, I welcome comments, suggestions, proposals, debate, and information related to the constitution. By submitting comments or emails, you recognize they may be published. Insulting, abusive, childish, obscene, or personal or libelous remarks will not even be acknowledged. Threats will be taken seriously, and forwarded to the authorities.
The first series of posts will be excerpts from A Proposed New Constitution, which will be widely reposted elsewhere online. Anyone is welcome to repost anything on this site under Creative Commons, as long as not for profit and with full acknowledgement of authorship.
Again, welcome. I look forward to hearing from you.
Al Carroll
Assistant Professor of History
Northern Virginia Community College
Author of Presidents' Body Counts
I came up with my own Constitutional proposal at https://politicallogic101.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteMy design was that it would, under no circumstances, have 18th amendment-type constitutional provisions that are designed to prohibit individual action. The only individualized prohibition I have is against voter fraud, but this is tempered by the fact that no one can have the right to vote disparaged on account of race or gender.
The other design was to have a tired setup of legal influence:
Superlative Constitution Section 5: Unamendable, provides for the inherent power of the national government to keep the union together, the inherent power of states to be republics and have power over the federal government, and how to amend sections 1-4 of the Superlative Constitution.
Superlative Constitution Section 4: amendable by unanimous resolutions of every current and future state legislature, sets out federalism and how constitutions must be interpreted to protect individual rights.
Superlative Constitution Sections 1-3: amendable by unanimous resolutions of every state legislature currently existing; sets out how binary codes in every part of the constitution work; sets out the most protected individual rights: the right to campaign for systemic change, the right of self-defense and the right to counsel in criminal cases; sets out how the positive and comparative constitutions work and get amended.
Comparative Constitution (10 sections): amendable with the current amendment procedure, sets out how legislation works, what legislation is allowed to do, what legislation is prohibited from doing, what court cases are allowed, what court cases are prohibited, how judicial review works and how the positive constitution actually gets amended pursuant to Section 3 of the Superlative Constitution.
The Positive Constitution (Section labels given by Superlative Constitution): amendable by either a resolution of a majority of states or 3/5 of each house of Congress and the majority of the people in a referendum; this states all of the things that are subject to the most amendments which are election qualifications for Representatives (1 chosen by each state legislature, 1 chosen by each of 400,000 individual citizens over the age of 18), election qualifications for Senators, President, and prohibited state actions; this also covers the powers of foreign policy and treaty making powers.
Also in the positive Constitution is the only place in the Constitution for the duties of the people, the most controversial aspects are: universal conscription into the military, teaching and juries, the conscription of members of Congress into the front lines of foreign conflicts they get us into, and the conscription of lawyers for defense counsel.
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