[Editor’s Note: In light of this week’s inauguration, I-CONnect is pleased to feature a five-part symposium on the state of US constitutionalism after Trump. The introduction to the symposium can be found here.] —Sanford V. Levinson, The University of Texas School of Law Changes in administration inevitably present another test case for determining the extent
Words to a Delegate: Crafting Article V
Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students J.D. Student Contribution –Larissa Warren, rising 3L, Boston College Law School [Editor’s note: The students in my advanced seminar on constitutional amendment wrote excellent papers in their take-home examination for the course. They were given a choice of two questions to answer: (1) “Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to
Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to Amend?
Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students J.D. Student Contribution [Editor’s note: The students in my advanced seminar on constitutional amendment wrote excellent papers in their take-home examination for the course. They were given a choice of two questions to answer: (1) “Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to Amend?”; or (2) “Assume the year is
Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to Amend?
Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students J.D. Student Contribution [Editor’s note: The students in my advanced seminar on constitutional amendment wrote excellent papers in their take-home examination for the course. They were given a choice of two questions to answer: (1) “Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to Amend?”; or (2) “Assume the year is
Direct Democracy and Constitutional Change: Institutional Learning from State Laboratories in the USA
—Jurgen Goossens, Ph.D. Candidate Ghent University, LL.M. Yale Law School Although the federal constitutional amendment procedure in Article V of the U.S. Constitution has not been altered since its adoption 226 years ago, constitutional tradition in the 50 states has substantially evolved. For instance, popular referenda were unknown in 1787, but are now ubiquitous in
Myth and Misdirection in Constitutional Amendment
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School Cross-posted from Cognoscenti. There is a constitutional amendment for every problem in the United States, or so politicians would have us believe. Is it your view that abortion is unraveling the moral fabric of America? Somewhere, a conservative politician is campaigning for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion with
The Unamendable Corwin Amendment
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School Article V entrenches rules to formally amend the United States Constitution. It has been used to make and memorialize many democratic advances since the country’s founding, from the First Amendment’s protections for speech and religion, to the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equality, to the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s expansion of the
