Giving Up on the Constitution

The statement is invalid because it focuses only on the constitution’s flaws rather than its strengths. The reasons given are right, but they cannot explain the constitution’s abolition. According to Louis Michael Seidman, we should “try to free ourselves from existing subjugation so that we can give the real opportunity a chance.” It’s impossible to say which is worse: his bad suggestion or what his essay reveals about the state of advanced education in America today (Waldron). Truly, no constitution planned by council and subject to sanction by an extensive and assorted populace ever will be great. In any case, the U.S. Constitution is the best endeavor in history to take care of the perpetual humanitarian, political issue: making a legislature by assent with enough energy to secure the unalienable, equivalent, singular privileges of the administered, yet not all that capable that it undermines or harms those rights.

The essay also talks about the leaders who have been part of making the constitution and claiming to abide by it, yet they ended up assuming the Constitution for their personal benefits. The writer believes the need for certain urgent need for some actions to be taken outside the constitution during trying moments. All the positive achievements of the constitution are being assumed. He assumes achievements of the constitution like availing a system based on checks and balances hence the ability to evaluate leader’s performance and the bill of rights embedded in the Constitution and its amendments to correct errors.

The Constitution having provided for the capacity to amend it, then the argument for its abolition is not valid. Instead of scrapping off the whole thing the areas of weakness should be checked and altered so that it can suit the people’s interests hence benefit them. The Constitution carefully isolates and confines government control, in this way securing a limitless domain of exclusive opportunity from government provocation, if just we tail it. Maybe the argument should be; the constitution should be amended to suit the needs of the citizens.

The Soundness of the Argument

Though most of the examples in the essay are real, the argument is not sound. The reason why the argument is not clear is, the writer does not give an alternative solution or constitution to replace the existing one. He encourages us to overlook the one we have. However, he just needs us to ignore established arrangements he supposes poorly designed. While destroying the Constitution, he concedes that “the right to speak freely and religion, square with the insurance of the laws and securities against the legislative hardship of life, freedom or property” justify some right or protected endorse. He additionally supposes we require not interfere with “to what extent the president’s term ought to last or whether Congress ought to comprise of two houses but does not give the reason why.

The confinements on a well-known decision that he mourns are less the aftereffect of the charges of the Constitution than of the Supreme Court’s assumed implementation of these orders through the force of legal survey. Doubtlessly, as the writer contends, without the Constitution, there would be no constitutionalism and in this way, no statutory audit, however, that does not make the Constitution the sole or even the principal source of the issue. The constitutional theorists are ”fixated on the bogus issues of legal power and strategies of sacred interpretation.“ Obsessing over these false issues ”avoids the more profound problem“: Why ought to government authorities comply with the Constitution in any case.

The source of this affirmed fixation, as indicated by Seidman, is the work of Alexander Bickel. A mid-twentieth-century Yale law teacher, particularly his 1962 book, Bickel condemned legal audit as a ”degenerate establishment“ that raises the ”counter-majoritarian trouble“ of unelected judges ”making an open approach that ties whatever is left of us. Bickel’s proposition keeps on frequenting sacred verbal confrontation (Barnett). Despite Bickel himself is once in a while referred to out in the open civil argument, his case has been rehashed incalculable circumstances in daily paper articles, television shows tirades, vainglorious affirmation listening to talks, and exhausting graduate school lectures.“

Bickel ”committed a vital error,“ Seidman trusts ”an oversight that we have to adjust on the off chance that we are ever to draw in genuinely with the genuine issues of constitutionalism.“ Bickel’s critical mix-up was his charged inability to see that ”legal audit is only a system for implementing the orders of the Constitution (Del, and Bonelli). The Constitution is counter-majoritarian, in any event in a particular sense.“ It is not valid, of course, that Professor Bickel did not understand the Constitution is undemocratic. The purpose of his book was to demonstrate that legal survey is, in any case, conflicting with majority rule government to the degree that the Court’s decisions of unlawfulness are not in the light of the Constitution.

Assumptions on Giving Up on the Constitution

The constitution is to be blamed for the chaos that is experienced in America and therefore should be abolished. In the hypothesis, Bickel does not look at other factors that could be affecting the state and put it on the verge of its death. He assumes that since the constitution was made by people who died a long time ago and are not aware of the problems facing the country currently it does not suit the needs of the current generations. The constitution age is a backward way of thinking since the constitution caters for the needs of the citizens of all generations.

Another assumption is that the only way to solve America’s problem is through giving up on the Constitution. Though the constitution may have its setbacks, it is still important in the long run. Bickel is biased in his argument about the abolition of the constitution and just looks for reasons to support his already made up mind about the constitution (Swatridge). It is hard for a country to run without a written law. He assumes factors like the form of government is provided for in the constitution and that the constitution is a protector of individuals.

Bickel also assumes that since there have been leaders who have made decisions outside the constitution, then the constitution is of no use. This is not true because some situations may need quick action and there may be no time to consult and follow protocol, but that does not mean that the constitution is not being followed at all. A good example is when the president as commander in chief of the armed forces makes a decision in times of war, it does not mean that he does not respect the constitution but it is because of the urgency of the matter.

Works Cited

Barnett, Randy E. Restoring the lost constitution: The presumption of liberty. Princeton University Press, 2013.

Del, Lungo C. G, and Bonelli E. Tognini. Academic Discourse - New Insights into Evaluation. Bern: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2014.

Swatridge, Colin. The Oxford Guide to Effective Argument and Critical Thinking. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Waldron, Jeremy. ”NEVER MIND THE CONSTITUTION: On Constitutional Disobedience.“ Harv. L. Rev. 127 (2014): 1147-2593.