How long has constitution been in effect

The 12th Amendment, ratified in , mandated that electors vote separately for president and vice president. More than a century later, the 17th Amendment similarly changed the election process for the U. Senate , giving the American people—rather than state legislatures—the right to elect senators. In comparison to its treatment of the executive and legislative branches of government, the Constitution itself remained relatively vague on the role of the Supreme Court and the judicial branch, leaving its organization largely up to Congress.

Madison Since then, the Court has taken an increasingly active role in interpreting the laws made and actions taken by the other two branches, and ensuring that both abide by the Constitution.

That balance of power quickly changed over the years, as the federal government expanded and took an increasingly dominant role. Federalism became the law of the land thanks to Supreme Court decisions like McCulloch v. Black men voting in a significant election following the Civil War, Sandford They argue that presidential systems are rigid and inefficient, and are inferior to a parliament because if the public does not like their prime minister, a vote of no confidence will be conducted and the leader will be swiftly removed and replaced This seems like an infinitely more competent removal process than the impeachment process used in presidential systems.

The myriad of issues with the impeachment process in the United States begin with the vagueness of impeachable offenses in Article II, Section 4. Of those three presidents that have been impeached, Trump is also the third president to be acquitted of his impeachment charges, proving how ineffective the impeachment process is in the United States Unfortunately the Constitution uses a presidential system that likely could have been amended, along with the other aforementioned problems with the Constitution if the amending process was more suited to the reality of the modern United States.

In addition to the faults in the Constitution that make the removal of a president nearly impossible, the presidential election process is seriously flawed because of the use of an electoral college. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows people to actually choose their president, that ability is bestowed upon the electors of the electoral college While usually the results of the electoral college reflect the results of the popular vote, there are obvious election cycles that are an exception to that norm - such as the presidential election in which Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won the electoral college, and therefore the presidency In fact, in the past five elections, two have resulted in one candidate winning the popular vote and the other candidate winning the electoral college, and in both cases, the winner was a Republican The framers instilled the Electoral College in the hopes of diluting any populist influence and ensuring that the President would not be inordinately reliant on Congress.

Additionally, the framers wanted to ensure that the larger states would not have an unfair advantage over the small states, which was the justification for the chosen number of electors allotted to each state But since , these worries have been debunked and the Electoral College system has eroded into an antiquated and undemocratic election process that desperately needs abolition. The aforementioned trend points out a number of constitutional flaws.

The swing states are so important in a presidential election because of the winner-takes-all nature of the electoral college, meaning that if a candidate wins an election in a state by even a slim margin, they win all the electoral seats for that state, rather than the proportion of electors equivalent to the percent of popular votes for each candidate This can be extremely influential in an election if a candidate wins a notorious swing state like Pennsylvania or Florida, who have 20 and 29 electoral votes, respectively.

Since the winner takes all those electoral votes, just one state can make or break an entire election, regardless of the percentage of votes that the candidate actually won in that state. This was the case in when President Trump won the election, despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular election Over the past five elections, the winner of the popular vote has been a Democrat, despite the fact that a Republican has won three of those elections due to the electoral college This highlights the second major flaw in the Constitution regarding the presidential election process, which also links to problems in the Senate and the House, which is that the electoral college is not representative of the American populace.

Notable critics of the electoral college such as former Attorney General Eric Holder are publicly calling to abolish the electoral college, but this runs into the same issue that plagues the House and the Senate, that any legislation with this goal will likely die in the Senate even if it passes through the House, because there are too many people who benefit from the electoral college that will not stand to see it dissolved Hopefully the past two sections of this paper have made it abundantly clear that the Constitution does in fact need to be amended in order to serve the needs of twenty-first century Americans, as well as to fend off the modern threats to democracy that the United States faces today.

This section will delve into the plausibility of amending or rewriting the Constitution under its rigid constraints. In the opening paragraph of the article, Anonymous expresses their grievances with the chief executives of the past two decades, writing:. The first of these executives started a war based on false pretenses that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Bush and Donald Trump. The author continues by explaining the profoundly undemocratic Federal Government of the United States, first by observing the flaws of the executive branch and the electoral college, and continuing by criticizing the unrepresentative Senate.

Nor should some citizens get to vote for President, while others do not The problem that the territories run into time and time again is that the proposal to add DC and Puerto Rico as states serves no benefit to the Republicans, and therefore they are unwilling to budge Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.

The elements of the Constitution that this article argues need to be amended mirror those discussed in the previous sections of this paper, namely the obscenely disproportionate Senate, the gerrymandered House, and the antiquated Electoral College. Anonymous argues that the disconnect between legislation that Americans want and the legislation that Congress passes is usually blamed on the influence of money in politics, and while this is partly true, the misrepresentation of the populace is the less talked about but equally important factor The effects of the misrepresentation trickle down to the Supreme Court.

Anonymous recounts the example of the death of Justice Scalia, and subsequent refusal of the Republican controlled Senate to hold hearings for candidate Merrick Garland, resulting in the confirmation of two Conservative justices during the following administration Continuing on, anonymous specifies the areas where the federal government fails its citizens living in US territories by forcing them to pay taxes yet are not eligible for Supplemental Security Income, among other things.

Finally, it is noted that the office of the president went from being a somewhat modest position, to the most powerful office in the world The following section of the article starts with a fantastic analogy to explain the reason it is so difficult to amend the United States Constitution.

Here is where the article discusses plausibility for amending the Constitution. Under the constraints of Article V, it would be nearly impossible to gain the necessary supermajority. Since Congress can actually admit new states with a simple majority, the notion of admitting new states is technically within the realm of possibility The rationale behind creating new states out of D.

The second reason is that every subdivision of D. A fourth amendment would modify Article V to ensure that this scheme could not be repeated So how realistic is the proposed solution? Feldman compares the predicament to Israel, who still has not written their own constitution. The Israeli government cannot compromise and draft a constitution because the right wing is worried the left wing will impose individual rights that they disagree with, while the left wing fears that the right will push for a more right wing vision of what the country ought to look like.

The only way to do it is to make both sides feel like the other side is making a mistake Gladwell and Feldman emphasize that the only way they see any possibility for compromise in the United States government would have to be under the same conditions.

If both liberals and conservatives somehow feel like the other side is being duped, those are the conditions under which any agreements may be struck Now, the challenge will be to create those conditions when it comes to the discussion of amending the Constitution.

While this example from the Harvard Law Review is clearly far-fetched and unlikely to materialize, it proves that the discussion surrounding Constitutional revision is boiling up and has the potential to make an impact in the future. To circle back to the analogy about the man trying to find where he placed his glasses, the problems that affect the government are the very reason that it would be so difficult to fix them - a vicious cycle one might say.

The partisan nature of politics makes it extremely unlikely that the government would be able to cross the aisle and find comprehensive solutions to the deeply rooted issues of the Constitution. And if by some measure a Constitutional Convention were to occur, it would be a chaotic endeavor to say the least, and would likely lead to deadlock. What would be included in a new Constitution? Which amendments would be added to the current Constitution, and which would be abolished?

The hypotheticals are endless, but the main point remains that the United States Constitution was never intended to last into , and it no longer serves its citizens. Harvard Law Review. Baas, L. American Journal of Political Science, 23 1 , Bouie, J.

The New York Times. Feldman, N. The lifespan of written constitutions. The Law School Record , 55 2 , Jefferson, T. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson , 15, — Kinkopf, N.

Article II, Section 4. Klein, E. Democrats need to get serious on statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Lerner, M. Constitution and court as symbols. Yale Law Journal, 46 , Levinson, Sanford. So much to rewrite, so little time Constitutional Commentary , 27 3 , Levinson, S. The Constitution Is the Crisis. The Atlantic. Liptak, A. Mascaro, L. The Associated Press. Obama, B. Bath: Paragon. Prokop, A. Savage, C. How the Impeachment Process Works. Schoenbachler, M. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 47 1 , In , no country in the world had ever allowed its citizens to select their own form of government, much less to select a democratic government.

What was revolutionary when it was written, and what continues to inspire the world today, is that the Constitution put governance in the hands of the people. Constitution Day is a federal observance that commemorates the U. It is observed on September 17, the day the Constitution was signed in Constitution Day was established by law in In addition to creating Constitution Day on the day that had formerly been known as Citizenship Day , the act requires that any educational institution that receives federal funds holds an educational program on the Constitution on September The National Constitution Center is the place where the Constitution is celebrated, debated, and illuminated.

Constitution FAQs. What is the U. The U. When and where was the Constitution written and signed? Where is the Constitution? Is it at the National Constitution Center? When did the Constitution go into effect?