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"The author proposes and defends a constitutional amendment to require that laws of Congress be upheld unless the Supreme Court by unanimous vote decides that a particular law is unconstitutional. This will strengthen the people's right to be governed by majority rule, including in cases where rights are concerned"--

In real political life 'killer amendments' are very rare. William H. Riker was the first political scientist to draw systematic attention to this special 'heresthetic' phenomenon, but he was himself only able to identify a handful of successful 'killer amendments'. Subsequent systematic empirical research has brought a few more to attention. In this article what may be the first successful example from outside the US context is described. It took place, when the Danish Constituent Assembly in 1849 discussed, if a proper judicial review procedure should be institutionalized in the Danish Constitution. The motion was defeated by means of what looks like a nicely orchestrated 'killer amendment'. Adapted from the source document.

The article considers the risks of amendments to the basic law of the state, which are associated with the inability to accurately predict political and managerial problems arising in the new constitutional context. An analysis is conducted of the changes in constitutions as the basis of the political, economic, and social life of the societies that are bifurcation points from which development can proceed in various directions. This creates risks at the stages of formation and functioning of complex public systems of authority, whose work greatly influences the creation of an optimal quality of life as the criterion of the basic goal of a modern democratic state. The analysis is comprised of factors that affect the reduction or levelling of such risks, or increase the possible of their occurrence. A developed democratic political culture and a high degree of public readiness for radical changes in the foundations of the political system (for example, France after World War II) are identified as factors that positively affect the state system, and excessive haste in decision making and lack of broad public fundamental changes discussion (for example, Germany in the early 90-ies of the last century) are identified as factors that negatively affect the social integration of society and the achievement of uniformity in the quality of life on the territory of the state. Both examples demonstrate in the Russian context the need to balance state policy in the process of implementing political decisions that led to amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020.

Although one of the shortest written constitutions in the world, the U.S. Constitution, designed to embody the rights, laws, and guiding principles of a diverse and ever-changing populace, remains an enduring document. Since its ratification in 1787, the Constitution has been applied to a broad range of legal and political questions and, while often the subject of much debate, continues to serve as a stalwart reminder of the country's social and legal strides. This detailed volume breaks down each section of the Constitution and its amendments, also providing a concise overview of the field of

The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts provides students with a road map through the evolution of the Supreme Court and its decisions involving criminal justice, civil liberties, social justice and federalism, and the balance of powers between the three branches of government placed in a historical context with thoughtful questions for discussion.

This article is about two things; one general, the other specific. The general point is about the nature of interpretation and of the constraints that the text places on interpretation. The specific is about the ninth amendment. My general claim about interpretation is that no textual provision by itself seriously constrains how it is going to be interpreted. This, I argue, is true not just about the open-ended provisions like the ninth amendment, but quite generally, about all textual provisions. The fact that no text by itself constrains interpretation, however, does not mean that interpretation is unconstrained; only that constraints operate within a particular context in which the text is interpreted. In this context, there is always a number of easy interpretive questions which, under particular circumstances, are answered exactly as if the text by itself controlled the process of interpretation. But easy questions are easy, I argue, only because others are not, and there is no way of either avoiding complex questions or reducing them to the simple ones. Hence, the open-ended provisions (and, in the struggle about interpretation, all controversial provisions are bound to become open-ended, even if they did not start as such), will never be decisive for resolving controversial issues of interpretation. The ninth amendment is no exception here, and I begin by arguing that for every interpretation that sees it as support for judicial activism there is another, respectable one, that does not. Much of the recent theory of constitutional interpretation has been focused on the problem of "interpretivism" versus "noninterpretivism," and the ninth amendment is sometimes thought to legitimize the latter. I argue at some length that the dispute is dominated by what I view as mistaken assumptions about the role of the text in constitutional interpretation and that expansive judicial review need neither devalue the role of the text nor go beyond its interpretation. Good interpretations of open-ended constitutional provisions do not rely on dictionary-like reading of words, but rather on overall theories concerning the nature and functions of the institutions set up by the document and the values the political system is designed to implement. Placing too much reliance on the mere words of a single constitutional provision can in fact only confuse the task of constitutional interpretation. Similarly, a number of very important constitutional provisions could be absent from the text altogether, and yet the norms they state would be enforced anyway by any fair-minded reading of the text. While many provisions of the Bill of Rights have this character (and the founding fathers initially thought they were unnecessary), some have it to a greater degree than others, and none equals the ninth amendment. The ninth amendment is void of any substantive content; instead, it states a rule of construction which, even if assumed to entitle a court to engage in expansive judicial review, not only does not add anything to what we would know without it, but is also incapable of doing any real work in the process of actual interpretation. If an unenumerated right is capable of being derived from the overall scheme endorsed by the Constitution, the whole weight of that derivation (its legitimacy) will rest on its own argument, rather than the ninth amendment. If, on the other hand, the right cannot be otherwise convincingly derived, the ninth amendment will not help us either. The only (if any) thing the ninth amendment can do, I conclude, is to lead us astray by changing the discourse of constitutional law from the one shaped by political theory to one dominated by morality and ultimately religion.

Includes "Extra" session. ; Title varies slightly. ; At head of title: California legislature, First session- ; Mode of access: Internet.