Roman Mars

Could you talk about the nature of amending a constitution?

Like, I was kind of blown away by the idea that you could, you know, you could conceive of a constitution where you just erase shit and then replace it, but they decided to keep it all.

And what the thinking went into all of that?

That's right.

When we come back, we talk about why the framers felt it was necessary to be able to change the Constitution and how Article 5 amendments began to become functionally impossible.

You write about the framers of the Constitution being, you know, acutely aware of what it would mean if the Constitution wasn't amendable.

Because, you know, there wasn't a lot of precedent of longstanding constitutions.

And when they're not amendable, I don't know, maybe the one before this was longest lasting was 20 years, you know, like outside, you know, like, you know.

And so how did they treat the desirability of not just the necessity, but the desirability of amending the Constitution?

How soon into the Constitution existing did people realize that Article 5 was kind of a non-starter when it came to changing the Constitution in a meaningful way?

It makes passing amendments easier.

There's a thing about originalism that it's a thread in your book that you can – it's this creeping thread that grows.

It's not just starting in the 70s.

Like there's this sort of – I sort of – the big bang of it to me is the Dolly Madison publishing the Madison Papers or something.

All of a sudden you have to like –

pay attention to what they were thinking and not really think about it being an amendable living document, but like, oh, we're going back.

And that's 50 years after the fact.

Yeah.

I'm interested in that as the creeping force of originalism as under different names as it sort of goes through American history.

We have to take a break.