If you could introduce a Constitutional Amendment What would it be

[MarkD]

My number one legislative goal is to see a constitutional amendment get adopted which rewrites Section 1 of the 14th Amendment in order to make its meaning narrower and clearer.
I drafted such a proposal; it is long and detailed.
The most important part of my proposal is to take out this sentence from the 14th:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
I have written a set of detailed and much more specific rules to replace that sentence. Keeping this explanation very brief, states must still obey most of the right enumerated in the first eight amendments, but the Ninth is irrelevant to the state and unenforceable against them by the federal government. The Ninth only binds the powers of the federal government itself. States must not engage in discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, or disability status. States must continue respecting every citizens equal right to vote; gerrymandering will be prevented by requiring all redrawing of congressional district and state legislative district maps must be done by independent redistricting commissions. Scold the Supreme Court for its ruling in Bush v. Gore, telling the Court to never do anything like that ever again.
Numerous Supreme Court precedents would be overturned by this proposal, including Roe v. Wade, which I'm sure will be the most controversial part of what I am proposing. But the way I wrote it makes it quite clear why the Court should not have decided in favor of "abortion rights" in the first place.
A broad goal of this proposal is return a lot of law-making power to the states that the Supreme Court has usurped from them numerous times. It's based on my belief in states' powers -- I try not to use the term "states' rights" unless I am quoting someone else. The Supreme Court inappropriately has been deciding whether or not state/local laws are unconstitutional by deciding, abstractly, subjectively, when does a state not have a good enough reason to deprive someone of "liberty," or when does a state not have a good enough reason for treating people unequally. What constitutes "good enough" has been an ever-shifting goal post, and has been based purely on the subjective beliefs of the majority of Justices. I want to eliminate as much legislating from the bench as I can.
This proposal has elements that will be pleasing to conservatives and loathsome to liberals, while other elements will have the opposite effect. I purposely drafted it with the concept of a compromise in mind.
I have sent copies to certain members of the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee (sometimes "sent" means that I delivered it right to their Washington D.C. office in person). If Congress does not ever get around to proposing it, I also support the Convention of States Project.

[MarkD]

I would do

1} Amendment to ban discrimination based on race so we can finely repeal the civil rights act.

2} Amendment to bring back school prayer and the Ten Commandments in school class rooms

3} Amendment to make house seats term limited to 8 terms but I would make it that you can come back after 6 years have passed since your last term

4} Amendment to make senate seats term limited to 3 terms but that you can come back after 6 years.

5} Amendment to ban abortion in all cases.

6} And finally repeal all of the 14th amendment it has in some ways ruined American with Birth right citizenship abs causing the rights of the states to be ruined because it caused school prayer to be taken away took away states rights on marriage and took away the rights of the unborn.

1} I'm not sure what you mean. The last clause in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment is the Equal Protection Clause, which has always been interpreted, correctly, as a ban on racial discrimination by state governments. Do you want to adopt an amendment that bans racial discrimination by private enterprise the way the Civil Rights Act does?

2} Acceptable to me. I'm not sure about the likelihood of getting ratification, but I hope with you.

3 and 4} I have always been opposed to term limits. I would rather repeal the 22nd Amendment that adopt amendments that impose more term limits. Nonetheless, I support a political movement called Convention of States Project. I have created a thread about it here, in the Constitution and Law category. Please look for that thread - Convention of States. I support this movement, which is also trying to adopt term limits, for other reasons.

5} I oppose this too. I have a hard time believing the pro-life movement because they don't seem to be interested (most of them, anyway) in trying to impose any punishment on the woman who asks to get an abortion. Maybe you're not in that group and you would want harsh punishment on the woman who asks for an abortion, but if so, you appear to be so outnumbered that you won't get legislation passed saying so. Your idea for a constitutional amendment is just plain too extreme to get ratified .... by 38 states.

6} Maybe you've seen my signature already. I am very, very dedicated to trying to REWRITE Section 1 of the 14th Amendment -- the second sentence of it. I'm not sure how popular would be an amendment that just repeals the first sentence (defining citizenship in such a way as to create the "birthright citizenship" problem); maybe it would be too hard to get ratification of that. But I will work my fingers to the bone to try to get a complete rewrite of this sentence:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the Privileges or Immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within its jurisdiction of the equal protection of the laws."
That sentence should not be repealed, it should be rewritten so as to make the rules of what states cannot much clearer. Again, read my signature.

[MarkD]

- Amend the 2nd amendment so that it only applies to the federal government. State and municipality governments should be free to allow or ban guns to their hearts' content.

- Add things involving student rights.

- Strengthen the equal protection clause when it comes to sex/gender, LGBT, and age

You can't do both. Your first proposal would effectively repeal the Fourteenth Amendment and especially void the equal protection clause. Interesting choice to reverse over 100 years of civil rights jurisprudence.

I don’t think that’s true

Me either.
Incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment is based on the Due Process Clause, not the Equal Protection Clause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights
And it is a serious slippery slope fallacy to say that when someone advocates that one right in the Bill of Rights should not be incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, that person is advocating for repeal of the entire Fourteenth Amendment.

On the other hand, I disagree with darklordoftech that students' rights and a regulation on age discrimination ought to be elevated into constitutional law. As Prof. John Hart Ely wrote, "[C]onstitutional law appropriately exists for those situations where representative government cannot be trusted, not those where we know it can." (From "Democracy and Distrust," published in 1980.) I don't see any need to elevate students' rights and age discrimination into the Constitution.

(I DO see a need to rewrite Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. See my signature and, on this thread, page 7, reply #162.)

[MarkD]

- Amend the 2nd amendment so that it only applies to the federal government. State and municipality governments should be free to allow or ban guns to their hearts' content.

- Add things involving student rights.

- Strengthen the equal protection clause when it comes to sex/gender, LGBT, and age

You can't do both. Your first proposal would effectively repeal the Fourteenth Amendment and especially void the equal protection clause. Interesting choice to reverse over 100 years of civil rights jurisprudence.

I don’t think that’s true

Me either.

Incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment is based on the Due Process Clause, not the Equal Protection Clause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights

And it is a serious slippery slope fallacy to say that when someone advocates that one right in the Bill of Rights should not be incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, that person is advocating for repeal of the entire Fourteenth Amendment...

I'm a believer that the key to incorporation is actually the privileges and immunities clause; equal protection is only in force against discrimination, not broad rights violations like the one being proposed. (I'll backtrack a little for clarity – it's at least ironic that someone is directly attacking the Fourteenth Amendment while extolling the equal protection clause. It might not be impossible to come up with some linguistic contrivance whereby "nor" needs no antecedent, but it sure is doubtful.)

Section 1 in full reads: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

You can't re-read the Amendment with a strikethrough to simply say "Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." And then to say that the equal protection clause could survive (at all, let alone as applied to the states) in a sentence that is clearly unconstitutional? It seems ridiculous on its face.

It's specious to say that an Amendment allowing states to make laws abridging one of the enumerated privileges and immunities (at least in 1868) would not explicitly overturn the Fourteenth Amendment. If a State can now make and enforce such a law, Section 1 collapses.

It's not a slippery slope; it's a house of cards. You just knocked out the entire bottom floor.

edit: But this is all for fun, so I don't mean to rain on the parade to hard.

The only thing you've said I can agree with is that the Privileges or Immunities Clause can be a good source for incorporating the Bill of Rights. On the rest of what you said, we're going to have to just agree to disagree.

[MarkD]

Off the top of my head, three

1) a) The Supreme Court of the United State shall consist of a Chief Justice and not more than eight Associate Justices.

b) If, in the opinion of three-fourths of the Justices, any Justice shall through age or infirmity be no longer able to carry out the duties of his office, the Justices so affirming shall so inform the Senate and House of Representatives in writing under their signatures, and any Justices dissenting from this shall have thirty days in which to similarly notify the Senate and House of Representatives of their dissent. In the event that the Senate and House shall, by two-thirds of votes cast, concur with such opinion, the Justice shall cease to hold office and a successor be appointed as in the case of his death or retirement, but if such majorities be not obtained he shall continue in office.

[no packing allowed, but a provision to remove Justices who go senile]



2) Amendments to this Constitution shall have affect upon their ratification, not more than seven years after their submission to the States, by three-fourths thereof. But no ratification shall be made after the expiry of seven years from said submission, any such ratifications being held illegal and void.


[no more nonsense about Amendments getting resurrected 200 years after they were proposed]


3) No law of the United States or of any State shall take effect until the legislative body enacting it shall have also enacted how the revenue shall be raised for any expenditure necessary for its execution, which monies shall be paid by the United States in the case of a United States Law, and by the State in the case of a State Law.


[no "unfunded mandates". Whichever level of government mandates the expenditure also pays the bill for it]

What's nonsense about it? Some ideas are timeless and are just as relevant when they were proposed 200 years ago as now. If an idea is NOT timeless and only pertains to the era when proposed, then the proposers should add a section that their proposal must be ratified within X number of years or else it is not validly ratified. Let the people who do the drafting decide whether their proposal needs to be ratified within some certain number of years.

[MarkD]

Oh, what the heck. Why not repost this? I'm bored and trying to find something to post in this board.

My number one legislative goal is to see a constitutional amendment get adopted which rewrites Section 1 of the 14th Amendment in order to make its meaning narrower and clearer.
I drafted such a proposal; it is long and detailed.
The most important part of my proposal is to take out this sentence from the 14th:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
I have written a set of detailed and much more specific rules to replace that sentence. Keeping this explanation very brief, states must still obey most of the right enumerated in the first eight amendments, but the Ninth is irrelevant to the state and unenforceable against them by the federal government. The Ninth only binds the powers of the federal government itself. States must not engage in discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, or disability status. States must continue respecting every citizens equal right to vote; gerrymandering will be prevented by requiring all redrawing of congressional district and state legislative district maps must be done by independent redistricting commissions. Scold the Supreme Court for its ruling in Bush v. Gore, telling the Court to never do anything like that ever again.
Numerous Supreme Court precedents would be overturned by this proposal, including Roe v. Wade, which I'm sure will be the most controversial part of what I am proposing. But the way I wrote it makes it quite clear why the Court should not have decided in favor of "abortion rights" in the first place.
A broad goal of this proposal is return a lot of law-making power to the states that the Supreme Court has usurped from them numerous times. It's based on my belief in states' powers -- I try not to use the term "states' rights" unless I am quoting someone else. The Supreme Court inappropriately has been deciding whether or not state/local laws are unconstitutional by deciding, abstractly, subjectively, when does a state not have a good enough reason to deprive someone of "liberty," or when does a state not have a good enough reason for treating people unequally. What constitutes "good enough" has been an ever-shifting goal post, and has been based purely on the subjective beliefs of the majority of Justices. I want to eliminate as much legislating from the bench as I can.
This proposal has elements that will be pleasing to conservatives and loathsome to liberals, while other elements will have the opposite effect. I purposely drafted it with the concept of a compromise in mind.
I have sent copies to certain members of the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee (sometimes "sent" means that I delivered it right to their Washington D.C. office in person). If Congress does not ever get around to proposing it, I also support the Convention of States Project.

[MarkD]

Section 1: The US Senate shall be abolished, and the US House shall be the sole legislative chamber in the Country.

 -snip -

Just remember that, because of what's in Section 1 of your proposal, it cannot be adopted into the Constitution unless all 50 states ratify the proposal.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.