Is the US Constitution still fit for purpose?

The U.S. Constitution is our secular society’s most revered text. It is the bedrock on which the republic was built. It has generally served us well for the last 237 years. 

Changing it is like trying to rewrite the Ten Commandments. More than 11,000 amendments have been proposed since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was added. Only 17 have been ratified. 

This anniversary year is a time to celebrate how far America has come and to ask a direct question: Is the Constitution still fit for purpose?

The world is profoundly different from what it was when the Framers wrote the Constitution. They could not have anticipated the threats posed by artificial intelligence, global warming, and weapons of mass destruction. Technologies and risks develop much faster than the political will to govern them, risking lives, liberty, privacy and agency over our happiness. 

The Framers did anticipate official corruption and wanton violations of the Constitution. They designed three equal branches of government to check and balance each other. But that system has broken down. Congress has often capitulated to presidential corruption. Motivated by ideology, the U.S. Supreme Court has placed the president above the law. The current president is engaging in unprecedented corruption, illegalities, and perversions of justice that have severely damaged the American people’s faith in government. 

Insofar as the Constitution establishes guardrails against these abuses, President Trump often ignores them, as well as social norms like fairness, dignity, decency and integrity. 

The Supreme Court has also given undue power to special interests by allowing them to make unlimited contributions to our increasingly costly political........

© The Hill