Tag / constitution
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Going Towards And Away From Democracy
On March 24, Thailand will hold its first elections since a 2014 coup made General Prayut Chan-ocha the Prime Minister. Currently, Thailand is ruled by a military junta. This isn’t the first instance of junta rule in Thailand. Since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, Thailand has experienced twelve coups, more than any other…
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The Plan To Elect The President By Majority
The United States Constitution is outdated, rigid, and quirky. It is the oldest living Constitution, is notoriously difficult to amend, and it established arcane institutions like the Electoral College, which is so convoluted that no other country decided to emulate it. The Constitution is also unique in that it cedes a substantial amount of legislative…
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Amending The Amendment Process
Under Article V of the Constitution, two thirds of both the House and the Senate must approve of any potential Constitutional Amendment. If both houses approve, the amendment is sent to each of the fifty states and becomes law only if three quarters of the states vote to ratify it. The system creates daunting barriers…
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The Supreme Value: Why Free Speech Is Paramount On College Campuses
“Knowledge is power,” is a ubiquitous aphorism in modern society. As George Washington–our university’s namesake–once said, “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” The exalted status of knowledge in society is remarkably recent. Not until the Enlightenment–or as it’s also known–the Age of Reason (17th-18th centuries) did knowledge become such a…
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One Person, One Vote(?)
Developing the Constitution of the United States was not easy. A testament to political engineering, the Constitution had to strike a balance of federal representation between its largest and smallest states. The compromise between these states meant that an upper chamber, the Senate, would consist of two senators per state while the lower chamber, the…
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Fixing Constitutional Amendments: A Cure Worse Than The Disease
It is easy to look at our chaotic political situation and say that we wish substantive, enduring change could be enacted more quickly. Legislation can get passed one year and repealed the next, so it is easy to see why the idea of making constitutional amendments simpler to pass is appealing. What’s more, when a…
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No, Donald Trump is Not a Constitutional Crisis
“Constitutional crisis” is quite possibly one of the most overused (and misused) phrases in political commentary. Recently, pundits predicting the end of the world as we know it have, for a broad assortment of reasons, taken to calling Donald Trump’s victory a constitutional crisis. These reasons include the apparent unconstitutionality of some of his policy…
