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Yes, Eighteenth Century Constitutionalism for the Twenty-First Century
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Thomas, George B. |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | George Thomas Williams College The sentiment that the Constitution needs to be radically altered to keep up with the times is by now a fairly old one. It originated in the early years of the twentieth century where progressives insisted that the Constitution must be viewed in Darwinian terms so that we could “adapt” it to the “opinion of the age.” This notion of adaptation or evolution rejected the idea of a fixed constitution. Whether it was our inherited understanding of liberty, or constitutional forms such as the separation of powers, we would have to adapt these to meet the needs of “political development.” While progressive arguments combined pragmatic and evolutionary justifications, both strands of thought tended to reject the notion of permanent constitutional foundations. Thus progressives were often dismissive of fixed constitutional rights and limits as a relic of eighteenth-century thought that must be reconstructed to bring our government into accord with the flow of History. In Woodrow Wilson’s words, a “living” constitution “must be Darwinian in structure and practice [as] no living thing can have its organs offset against each other as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=schmooze_papers |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
