Political Science
Yvonne – The Constitution is hard to amend. Why is that? Here’s some help…
Because there we have not witnessed a significant constitutional amendment in our country since 1992, only goes ahead to prove that making a change to the constitution is almost impossible. From what we see in other European countries or the so-called superpowers, like Germany and France, they make amendments any changes to their constitutions in recent years, and one thing is clear from this is that the cumbersome national amendment process in the United States makes us an outlier ( POSNER, 2014). Antonin Scalia, an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, pointed out that the problem is Article 5 of the constitution. And all we need to do is change it, but the problem is that this would require—an amendment ( POSNER, 2014).
Article 5 states that an amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate or by a convention called into being by Congress. After a request from two-thirds of the states, these are the two possible ways and the first step to achieve an amendment. If an amendment makes it through either one, then step two, which is ratification by three-quarters of the states. In other terms, for us to have an amendment, it requires a supermajority not once but twice. One positive, however, that can be picked from this process is that the framers of the constitution recognized that the ground rules should be stable for a government to function well ( POSNER, 2014). This is what makes our constitution hard to amend.
Reference
Cobb, W. N. (2019). Political Science Today. SAGE Publications.
POSNER, E. (2014). The U.S. Constitution Is Impossible to Amend. SLATE GROUP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwREAW4SlVY&t=95s (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)