A Moment for Pragmatism

One of the least controversial things to say about the U.S. Constitution is that it has proven very difficult to amend. The numbers are familiar. Only 27 amendments have been made since the Constitution was ratified, and 10 of those were adopted at the same time, only a few years after the original ratification. These numbers are all the more remarkable given that there have been over 11,500 attempts to amend the Constitution since it was first enacted.

The paucity of amendments is also striking as a comparative matter. The national constitution that India approved in 1949 has been amended 98 times since then, and Alabama’s 1901 constitution has been amended a whopping 880 times.