Posner: The U.S. Constitution Cannot Be Changed

Our country’s guiding document is virtually impossible to amend, University of Chicago professor Eric Posner writes in Slate. Though other countries routinely update their constitutions, ours requires an amendment be proposed by either a two-thirds majority of both House and Senate or by convention, requested by two-thirds of the states. And if an amendment reached that point, it would still  have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. The founders “understood that people will need to change those ground rules as new challenges and problems surface with the passage of time,” Posner writes. “They didn’t mean for the dead hand of the past to block necessary progress. But the founders blundered. They made passing an amendment too hard.” Not only do those rules make the process next to impossible given today’s political climate, the attitude in the U.S. toward the Constitution as a document has changed – no longer is it seen as a “fallible legal instrument,” but rather, a “totem.”