1. Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, John Paul Stevens
- Author:
- Geoffrey R. Stone
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- The U.S. Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times. Twenty-five of those amendments were designed in one way or another to improve the text of the Constitution. Only two of those amendments were designed to override what the nation deemed an erroneous interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court. The Eleventh Amendment, adopted in 1798, overrode the Court's decision in Chisolm v. Georgia (1793), which had held that a citizen of South Carolina could sue the State of Georgia. The Sixteenth Amendment, adopted in 1913, overrode the Court's decision in Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust Co. (1895), which had held unconstitutional the federal income tax. On average, then, the nation has amended the Constitution in order to override Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution roughly once every 112 years. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19319#sthash.6zb3UPfi.dpuf
- Political Geography:
- United States