The Relevance of Constitutional Amendments: A Response to David Strauss
36 Pages Posted: 11 Sep 2002 Last revised: 2 May 2008
Abstract
David Strauss recently argued that constitutional amendments are irrelevant, in the sense that American constitutional law would look very much like it does today, even if the Constitution had been ratified without a formal amendment mechanism like that found in Article V. We argue that Professor Strauss's main claims - that amendments are often neither necessary nor sufficient for producing constitutional change - while true, do not support his irrelevancy thesis. Moreover, we argue that the few benefits of formal constitutional amendments that he does concede are unduly minimized; and that he has overlooked several other benefits of formal constitutional amendments, which we describe.
Keywords: Constitution, constitutional amendment, Article V, Article Five, constitutional interpretation, Strauss, amendment process
JEL Classification: K100
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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