Giving Compass' Take:
- Nathan Pippenger discusses rethinking the Constitution and challenging its limits to make the U.S. more democratic in its governance.
- How can philanthropy help address the root causes of the breakdown of U.S. democracy we are currently witnessing? What might a stronger, more democratic country look like?
- Learn more about strengthening democracy and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on democracy in your area.
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In 2013, The New Yorker published an essay observing that one of the few remaining points of bipartisan consensus among the nation’s political elite was their shared love for the Constitution—even as an equally bipartisan frustration with it seemed to be spreading throughout the rest of the country. Describing the venerable parchment in terms that few politicians would dare employ, the essay’s title offered a punchy summation about rethinking the Constitution: The problem was “Our Broken Constitution.”
As Osita Nwanevu notes in his new book, The Right of the People, Americans have been trying to tell pollsters that something is broken for the last 25 years. In a remarkable shift from the optimism that opened this century, when nearly three-quarters of the country expressed satisfaction with the direction of American life, large majorities have now come to disapprove of the way things are going in the United States. What’s more, they predict that by midcentury their country will be less prosperous, less powerful, more divided, and more unequal, underscoring the importance of rethinking the Constitution.
This protracted national pessimism suggests that something is broken, but is it the Constitution? The question is trickier than it may appear on first glance, for the brokenness of something like a constitution is not a simple thing to determine. The familiar adage holds: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There’s no question that something needs to be done if the sink won’t drain or the car won’t start, but if we’re trying to determine whether a constitution is “broken,” we first need to explain what it is that “we” expect it to do when it’s “working.” In fact, things are even more complicated than that, since it’s far from a straightforward matter to say exactly what a constitution is: Is it the text alone? Its underlying values? The contexts, norms, and precedents that are attached to it? (Finally, whose job is it to interpret these things?)
Read the full article about rethinking the Constitution by Nathan Pippenger at Democracy Journal.