by Matthew Fouts

Created on: October 11, 2008

Debating issues of constitutional change is like listening to two professors debate about the nature of grammar. They inevitably fall into one of two camps. They are either prescriptive or descriptive and, on the whole, they tend to completely ignore one another's viewpoints.

Grammarians of the prescriptive variety argue (at least in English speaking countries) that the grammar of Standard Written English is inherently "right." For them, it is as if God, in his infinite wisdom, sent moses down from the mountain with the rules of Standard Written English carved into stone tablets. All we need to do, they say, is follow the divine and unchangeable laws of GRAMMAR and everything will turn out ok.

They have a point. We all need a standardized form of written language so that we can communicate our ideas effectively. However, they fail to acknowledge that the rules of grammar were not actually handed down by a supreme being. Rather, the rules of grammar are agreed upon by it's users and those who prescribe a particular usage fail to acknowledge that changes need to be made from time to time, in order to accommodate small changes in our usage.

Those constitutional analysts who fall into the prescriptive camp follow a course similar to that of their grammatical brethren. Only in this scenario, Moses has come down from the mountain with the original constitution carved into the stones. Who knew he was one of the founding fathers.

It is true that the proponents of what Justice Scalia calls "originalism" make a good argument. The US constitution is an amazing document that has helped us pilot the ship of state through waters, both rough and calm, for over two hundred years. It's not the sort of thing that we want to mess around with unless we have good reason.

However, the supporters of originalism (an invented word if I ever saw one) fail to acknowledge that the Constitution lacks the perfection that one would expect from something handed down by the almighty. In fact, the US Constitution is so imperfect that we have had to amend it twenty-seven times thus far, in order to make small changes or clarify what we think it meant.

If we want our nation and our culture to flourish in the centuries to come, it is important that we not treat the Constitution as if it were some kind of divine document. This thing was written by people and it can be amended by people (when we observe the proper protocols). And, while I grant that we should indeed tread softly when making any changes to the fundamental document of our nation, we should not be afraid to make changes when it is clear that changes are necessary.

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