We can be Framers too

How should we go about changing the Constitution, if we could? There is a lot of value in giving constitutional change a separate track from ordinary politics, so it does not become just another partisan football. Constitutional principles should come from the people in a different sense than laws, presidential elections, or midterms do. One way would be to hold a constitutional convention every generation, staffed by a blend of specially elected delegates, senior public officials, and, perhaps, citizens selected jury-style to represent everyday experience. The convention might proceed in two stages: state, local, or regional versions channeling their results and some of their personnel into a national convention. The convention would propose any constitutional changes its members endorsed, which would then go to a special national referendum. Offered, say, a proposal to reinstate Roe, authorize campaign-finance regulation, or rebalance the Senate, the people would speak via this process as a “we.”

Constitutional conventions have about the same odor in liberal circles as “citizen sheriffs” and the posse comitatus—cranky tricorne-hat stuff interesting only to the populist right. This impression gets a boost from the ongoing conservative effort to call a convention through state legislatures, with the goal of amending the Constitution to require a balanced budget, term limits for federal regulators, and perhaps some other right-wing goals. But nothing about constitutional revision is intrinsically conservative—quite the contrary—and if it seems cranky, that is only because liberals became too comfortable with the idea that the Constitution was basically democratic enough and that the courts were politically congenial. Those conceits are hard to sustain now.

The most basic reason for constitutional change is not partisan at all, despite the fact that the right benefits from a frozen, anti-majoritarian Constitution and liberals are currently angry at the Supreme Court. Re-creating a constitutional politics for living citizens would make democratic self-rule a reality for everyone. The highest civic compliment we could pay one another would be to prefer the results of deliberation and voting today to an old Constitution interpreted by a few judges.