How hard should a constitution be to amend? A written constitution isn’t just a law, it’s the fundamental law which determines how all other laws are to be enacted. Changing the fundamental law is usually a much more complex process that changing an ordinary law and is much rarer. For example the United States Constitution has only been amended 27 times in 220 years (10 which happened at the same time), the Australian Constitution 8 times in 107 years. By contrast the California constitution has been amended over 500 times in less than a century. Most recently to overturn ruling by it’s highest court.
All three examples give the courts the power to interpret the constitution and strick down laws deemed to violate it despite them being passed by the legislature. Why given courts the power to strike down acts of the legislature in the 1st place if it isn’t much harder to amend the constitution than to pass an law? Should it be harder to amend the constitution than passing an ordinary law? How much harder? A supermajority in the legislature? Popular vote? Supermajority in a popular vote? A series of votes over several reays? Should different parts be harder to amend than others (ie civil rights, territorial integrity, state sovereignty)?
The US model is perfect. It makes you ask if you mean it, then it confirms that you really, really mean it, then it puts it to the states to see if they really, really mean it.
Given how hard it is to pass an amendment, they should be thought of as permanent, as in fact they are even if they are altered. Your mistakes and triumphs are forever enshrined for all to see. That knowledge has stopped many an amendment from being ratified, and justifiably so.
It should be hard, but not impossible. It should be permanent, but repealable. And it should be simple, not like some state constitutions with thousands of amendments.
It should be just barely possible. I like the U.S. model. At the State level, I’ve require approval of super majorities of both houses of the legislature, and a super majority of the counties within the state as determined by popular vote of the citizens therein. Might require a county to show approval by a supermajority of residents in order to count towards the needed super majority of counties.
Logically, I think any Constitution should be above and beyond difficult to amend or revise. The very idea that the Constitution is considered the test against which to compare all other legislation is, it seems, based on the concept of Constitutional law to be more permanent, more abstract and less generally trivial than statutory law.
At the very least, since the California Constitution is much more powerful than California statute, the Constitution should be far more difficult to amend than the statute, especially by direct democracy, due to the dangers of the Constitution being held hostage to transitory political whims.
You mean “isn’t any harder”, in California’s case. It takes merely a 50% + 1 vote by the public to make either one happen. When people argue that discrimination is “the will of the people”, they overlook the fact that the issue is extremely controversial and that the pro-ban folks have a slim majority, which they wouldn’t have but for a barrage of lying, scum-soaked commercials funded primarily by out-of-state religious interests.
This case proves that you can fool most of the people most of the time if you’re good enough at it; the initiative passed with just 52% of the vote, and I’m willing to bet more than 2% voted based on the “religious freedom” canard. The problem is, plenty of religions practiced in California embrace same-sex marriage and are now less free to express their religious beliefs. But it’s probably not that the Christian Yes on 8 contingent doesn’t respect those religions–they just have no idea that they are stepping on those religions’ toes and that already-legal same-sex marriage was not stepping on their religions’ toes. Simply put, a Constitution absolutely should not be subject to such easily manipulated whims.
I find myself agreeing more and more with Airman Doors, USAF these days. Doors, you are spot-on (assuming you’re talking about the federal model).
There’s an important legal distinction between amendments and revisions of the California Constitution. I can’t precisely explain it, partly since the very controversy of the distinction is the grounds for the current legal challenge to Proposition 8, but I do know that a revision by popular vote requires a supermajority, while an amendment only requires a 50% + 1 vote.
I believe it should be a democratic right of the People to alter or to abolish their constitution, and to institute a new one, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes so I have no problem with a constitution that makes you ask if you mean it, then it confirms that you really, really mean it, then it puts it to the test for period of time to see how it works out.
Or to put it more simply, I think a persistent majority should not be prevented from amending a constitution. To me the best system would be to allow a plebiscite to enact an amendment with a sunset provision unless reenacted after 10 and then 20 years before it becomes a permanent part of a society’s basic law.
I think it should require a super-majority, much like the federal Constitution in the US.
However, for anyone who thinks the prop 8 situation could be easily fixed if a super-majority was required, remember that prop 22 passed 8 years ago with > 60% of the vote. CA probably would have had a constitutional ban on SSM passed years ago with a super-majority, and then it would be almost impossible to change with a super-majority in favor of SSM.
Florida used to only require a majority for a constitutional amendment. In 2006, an amendment was passed which requires a 60% majority to pass an amendment.
That amendment passed with 54% of the vote.
In other words, be careful what you wish for. What if included in Prop 8 was a provision that any future amendment to overturn Prop 8 would require a 99% approval?
I keep hearing that, but it doesn’t make any sense. Why would CA have enacted a constitutional ban on SSM sooner if it was harder to amend it’s constitution?:dubious: Prop 22 was an ordinary statue; not a constitutional amendment.
Because anti-SSM folks in other states did exactly that. And they know that time isn’t on their side, so there would have been more of a need (as they perceived it) to strike while the iron is hot.