Governance

Abstract

The u.s. constitution and the bill of rights were drafted in an agrarian era by a small group of men as collectively brilliant as any in history. The government they created was designed with checks and balances and divided authority in order to prevent executive tyranny, sometimes override popular majorities, and avoid quick action on virtually anything. From its agrarian origins it has grown incrementally ever since in response to particular issues, economic necessity, and above all war, but not as a result of much planning, foresight, or effort to create a coherent political architecture. Nonetheless, the framework they created has survived and even thrived through sectional rivalry and the Civil War, the excesses of the Robber Baron era, two world wars, and the rise and fall of fascism and communism. The Constitution, for some, is a scripture hence beyond reform. Historian Charles Beard, less reverential, once argued that it was written to protect private wealth, especially that of the founders. That may not have been as true as Beard assumed for the founders, but it is clear that “By the middle of the nineteenth century the legal system had been reshaped to the advantage of men of commerce and industry at the expense of farmers, workers, consumers, and other less powerful groups within the society” (Horwitz, 1977, pp. 253–254). More recently, political scientists Robert Dahl, Sanford Levinson, Daniel Lazare, and Larry Sabato have questioned the inclusiveness of the Constitution as well as its effectiveness and future prospects. Dahl, for example, argues that undemocratic features were built into the Constitution because the founders “overestimated the dangers of popular majorities . . . and underestimated the strength of the developing democratic commitment among Americans” (Dahl, 2002, p. 39; Lazare, 1996, p. 46). While somewhat pessimistic about the prospects for greater democratization, he argues that “it is time—long past time—to invigorate and greatly widen the critical examination of the Constitution and its shortcomings” (pp. 154–156). Constitutional law expert Sanford Levinson agrees: “the Constitution is both insufficiently democratic . . . and sufficiently dysfunctional, in terms of the quality of government that we receive . . . [that] we should no longer express our blind devotion to it” (Levinson, 2006, p. 9).