The original constitution is really kind of amazing at how well it’s functioned. It has flaws, obviously, but seems really effective.
No, it didn't. It averaged more than one per decade, which isn't the same thing.
In that period you had the post-Civil War Amendments (3, between 1865 and 1870), more than 40 years with nothing, another burst from 1913-1920 (3 amendments), a burst in 1933 (2 amendments), one by itself in 1951, and then a flurry overlapping the end of the period from 1961-1971 (4 amendments, 2 each before and after your 1965 cutoff).
And, just to be complete, after that you’ve got one solitary amendment in 1992 (the last of the 11 that have passed of the 12 proposed together as the Bill of Rights) and nothing since.
> Not the longest dry spell either, the early 1800s also had a 50ish year void.
61 from the 12th Amendment, the last of the fairly immediate post-Constitution ones, in 1804 to the 13th, the first of the post-Civil War ones, in 1865.
1865 to 1965 was just to show a 100 year period were activity stayed hot to not say there weren't amendments before or after. In regards to the 2 after '65 cutoff they are still older than the 50 year claim (the 26th as of this year) so I didn't feel the need to mention them, only noting the 27th which as you mentioned passed in '92.
If one is interested in an exact list of amendment ratification dates rather than a summary that it has been slow for the last 50 but quite busy since it was made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit... is probably a more apt resource.
But it wasn't a 100 year period where activity stayed hot. It was a 106 year period (stretching to 1971) starting with a 5 year period where activity was hot, followed by a 43 year period of complete inactivity, and them some brief periods of sporadic activity, ending with a the single most active decade since the 1790s.
A 100 year period where activity stayed hot is a complete misrepresentation.
But I think, at the time, slavery was still legal in most of the world so while it would have been right to outlaw it, it’s understandable how it was allowed. And the amendments outlawing it actually show how the constitution works as ideas change over time.
If Americans change their opinion on guns then that could change as well. But I don’t think that will happen in 34 states.
The amendment to end slavery happened on the backbone of killing several hundred thousand Americans. The compromise between two sides was to shoot people until one side agreed.
This didn't happen, and the constitution still explicitly allows slavery.
You were just talking about how the 14th Amendment reflects how the Constitution adapts to the changing values of a nation. Yes, after one side shoots the other side into agreement, and after 750,000 lives ended. Then the victor decided the outcome of history.
One can only imagine how the course of the Constitution would have been "independent" to the course of the Civil War if the northern states had lost.
When I say independent of the constitution, I mean that no matter what legal foundational framework, I think we would have had the civil war to end slavery. Even if we had the magma carta or whatever.
Anyone convicted of a crime in the US can be turned into a slave as punishment, and that happens every day. US prisons are filled with slaves right this minute.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/9/9/slavery-in-the-u...
For example, the children of prisoners aren’t owned property to be sold and traded.
They didn't, and you quote the part that makes that clear:
“except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”
A whole lot of current social issues can be traced back to things rooted in the way penal slavery, and targeted over-criminalization and policing to supply bodies for penal slavery, immediately replaced chattel slavery with the 13th Amendment.
I don’t think imprisonment is slavery. There are many problems with the US prison system and it needs a lot of work to reform and correct. But at least it’s not chattel slavery.
Equating the two is not very helpful to the discussion because it distracts from a conversation about slavery by equating two different, but slightly similar topics.
Imprisonment is not slavery.
Penal slavery was very much a thing in much of the US for quite a while after the civil war (the federal government has since taken statutory and administrative steps to eliminate it, and may or may not have generally succeeded depending on exactly how you bound the term, but previously penal slavery in the US differed from chattel slavery only in that it had (often extremely corrupt) criminal conviction as an entry gate. And while penal slavery itself has been mitigated and arguably eliminated as a deliberate state practice (rather than an aberrant corruption of individual officials) subsequently (though still Constitutionally permitted) a whole lot of the over-criminalization and police and correctional culture built originally around the institution remains.
Now, one has a lot of open supporters (gun rights exceeding the US second amendment, in that the regulated militia component gets left out).
2) Considering the EXTREMELY violent, turbulent history of the last 100-150 years of governance (democratic and otherwise) in Europe and Asia, I don't think this is the strong argument you think it is.
Guns, I am not so sure. There are numerous benefits to be able to own guns besides protection.
The original constitution did not address slavery until the passing of the thirteenth amendment in 1865 which made it illegal except as punishment for a convicted crime.
it's true that the word slavery is not used, but if you talk about free people and then note that there are not free people and make political rules for how those non free people should be counted, then in a slave holding society it becomes somewhat obvious who you're talking about.
It is time to revise this in my opinion. Just because I am in prison does not mean you can require me to work. If you can't afford to feed, clothe, house, and provide necessary medical services, release me. The fact that the state of Texas can deny air conditioning to inmates (when the temperature is ought to be enough for the US to require Texas to release all inmates in those conditions. How can states that are arguably in direct violation of basic human rights still have representation in the union is beyond me.
» Refusing to install air conditioning is a matter not just of short-term cost savings, but of appearing tough on crime. State and local governments go to astonishing lengths to avoid installing air conditioning in prisons. In 2016, Louisiana spent over $1 million in legal bills in an attempt to avoid installing air conditioning on death row, an amount four times higher than the actual cost of installing air conditioning, according to an expert witness. Similarly, in 2014, the people of Jefferson Parish, LA only voted to build a new jail after local leaders promised there would be no air conditioning.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/06/18/air-conditionin...
It isn't just Texas. Prisoners throughout the country are malnourished and starving. It costs way too much to make a phone call so much so that public libraries offer assistance with phone calls.
Democracy should not mean tyranny of the majority. I don't understand how this is controversial. If states and local governments are in violation of the constitution, they should automatically lose representation in the union.