Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional AmendmentSanford Levinson An increasing number of constitutional theorists, within both the legal academy and university departments of government, are focusing on the conceptual and political problems attached to the notion of constitutional amendment. Amendments are, among other things, recognitions of the imperfection of existing schemes of government. The relative ease or difficulty of amendment has significant implications for the ways that governments respond to problems that call either for new structures of governance or new powers for already established structures. This book brings together essays by leading legal authorities and political scientists on a range of questions from whether the U.S. Constitution is subject to amendment by procedures other than those authorized by Article V to how significant change is conceptualized within classical rabbinic Judaism. Though the essays are concerned for the most part with the American experience, other constitutional traditions are considered as well. |
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... fact responded to those imperfections by significantly, if sometimes stealthily, modifying our constitutional principles. In any event, perhaps the basic questions within any jurisprudential system will be, first, the substantive ...
... fact coordinately call for a new constitutional convention? Could its agenda be limited to any given topics mentioned by the states, or would the convention have plenary power, free in effect to be as wide-ranging in defining ...
... fact—does a relevant society in fact recognize certain changes and structure its behavior accordingly?—than one of constitutional interpretation as such. Formal interpretation begins after the recognition of something as the ...
... fact proposed by Congress but never ratified by three-quarters of the states, which would in effect have entrenched chattel slavery at least in those states that had already adopted that terrible system as of 1861. John Vile presents ...
... fact of organic development as such, including the surprises sometimes presented by the fragile child who turns out to be a strapping mountain climber. Rather, what they oppose is the de facto creation—or substitution—of a new organism ...
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Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment Sanford Levinson No preview available - 1995 |
Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment Sanford Levinson No preview available - 1995 |