Need for a more Democratic Procedure of Amending the Constitution1

Seba Eldridge

American Political Science Review, 1916, vol. 10, issue 4, 683-688

Abstract: That final legislative authority in this country is lodged in the letter of a constitution that is amended with the greatest difficulty, and with a supreme court which is entirely independent of electoral control has become a commonplace of political discussion.To quote Professor Goodnow: “Acts of congress and of state legislatures are declared to be unconstitutional ‥‥ because they cannot be made to conform to a conception of the organization and powers of government which we have inherited from the eighteenth century;” and Dr. Blaine F. Moore: “If we may judge from the decisions based on the due process clause in the fourteenth amendment and applying to the States, the court has it in its power to make the similar clause in the fifth amendment cover practically all federal legislation dealing with new problems concerning which there are few or no precedents. If the court does make this entirely possible extension of its power, then the legislation dealing with the more recent and pressing questions is under the control of the popularly inaccessible justices of the supreme court.”Both these quotations are from studies published before the adoption of the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments, but they are only a little less true now than then, as an analysis of the history of those amendments will show.

Date: 1916
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