Don’t run it through AI, even I could probably figure that out.

Tell me what you think it is.
Take a minute to contemplate your answer if you’ve never pondered the question. Heck, take a week or even a month. If you arrive at more than one answer, great, list them in order of importance from most to least. What would you change, and why would that change benefit The People as a whole?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 400m,

My guess and opinion, it never gave or specified term limits for legislators. God Bless

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The number of SCOTUS members wasn’t limited to a specific odd number – say nine. Packing the court is high on the Dems agenda.

Also, this clause should’ve been included: “If the President and Congress can’t agree on a budget, the previous budget shall be used with all spending items, save debt service, reduced by one percent.”

Agreement would be quickly reached. And fiscal conservatives would be holding trump cards.

100% in agreement with VBVAGUY. Greatest flaw: No term limits for members of Congress.
On the same vein, there should have been age/term limits for SCOTUS justices.

Not the greatest flaw, but I really don't care for the presidential pardon power.

Great and admirable as it is, it explicitly described that new states could be admitted by Congress (Article IV, Section 3) but not how to get out - or for that matter whether/how states could get expelled from the Union - while not explicitly stating that the decisions by Congress (to allow the state in) and by each state (to request admission) were to be considered permanent.

There was a loud dispute about that ambiguity a while back.

I still wonder about a hypothetical situation on the flip side - the Feds expelling states. Hopefully, this won't ever apply to us, but it is a condition that many counties have had to deal with: losing a war and having to cede territory afterwards. Say we lost a war and had to give up territory comprising a state or two to settle. Would those states - then part of a different country - still have US Senators and Representatives? I'm guessing there would need to be an Amendment passed to officially deal with that.

It cannot suppress human nature. Nothing can, but the constitution’s greatest flaw is its vulnerability to the corrupting force of human nature.

^^^^
You can apply that to any and all constitutions. Are there any specific flaws you see in the US Constitution?

The courts expansion of federal power through the interstate commerce clause.

Maybe not the greatest flaw, but one that comes to mind is not specifying the maximum number of citizens that a representative can represent. George Washington was pretty adamant on this point, in fact it was the only speech he gave at the convention if I recall. His ideal number was something like 30,000 constituents per representative. Today, the average representative has over 750,000 constituents. There is no way that a representative can know what is going on with that many people and be able to represent their interests faithfully. The result is that representatives become creatures of the national political movements rather than representing local concerns.

quote:

Originally posted by ruger357:
The courts expansion of federal power through the interstate commerce clause.

I was going to say the same thing.

Commerce Clause

The Commerce Clause is Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among states, and with the Indian tribes.”

Congress has often used the Commerce Clause to justify exercising legislative power over the activities of states and their citizens, leading to significant and ongoing controversy regarding the balance of power between the federal government and the states. The Commerce Clause has historically been viewed as both a grant of congressional authority and as a restriction on the regulatory authority of the States.

The Constitution does not explicitly define the word “commerce” leading to wide debate as to what powers Section 8, Clause 3 grants Congress. Some argue that it refers simply to trade or exchange, while others claim that the framers of the Constitution intended to describe more broadly commercial and social intercourse between citizens of different states.

Courts have generally taken a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause for much of United States history. In 1824’s Gibbons v. Ogden, the Supreme Court held that intrastate activity could be regulated under the Commerce Clause, provided that the activity is part of a larger interstate commercial scheme. In 1905’s Swift and Company v. United States, the Supreme Court held that Congress had the authority to regulate local commerce, as long as that activity could become part of a continuous “current” of commerce that involved the interstate movement of goods and services.

For a brief period between 1905 and 1937, the Supreme Court narrowed their interpretation of the Commerce Clause in what has now become known as the Lochner era. Courts during this era experimented with the idea that the Commerce Clause does not empower Congress to pass laws which impede an individual’s right to enter a business contract.

However, beginning with NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp in 1937, the Court began to recognize broader grounds upon which the Commerce Clause could be used to regulate state activity. Most importantly, the Supreme Court held that activity was commerce if it had a “substantial economic effect” on interstate commerce or if the “cumulative effect” of one act could have an effect on such commerce. Decisions such as NLRB v. Jones, United States v. Darby, and Wickard v. Filburn demonstrated the Court's newfound willingness to give an unequivocally broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. From the NLRB decision in 1937 until 1995, the Supreme Court did not invalidate a single law on the basis of overstepping the Commerce Clause’s grant of power.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause

A close 2nd would be "general welfare":

Section 8.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

The "balancing act" of proportional representation in the House and fixed representation in the Senate was, and remains, pure genius.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion: the flaw isn't in the original text. My least favorite flaw is the 17th Amendment. It changed Senatorial appointments from "By the state legislatures" to "By popular vote." And I don't say this simply because a map using the old system in the current day would likely be filibuster-proof red. I say it because it would accurately represent the sentiments and the wishes of the people, most generally.

I agree with the issues with 'clauses' from the Constitution.

I wish I had a better understanding of why a short phrase has so much power and direction.


I also agree about congressional term limits. I am sure that the Founding Fathers never envisioned the languishment of people once elected to office.

quote:

My least favorite flaw is the 17th Amendment.

The 16th and 17th Amendments both happened at the beginning of the "Progressive era", in 1913. Both weakened the States and allowed for the expansion of the Federal government.

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:

Perhaps an unpopular opinion: the flaw isn't in the original text. My least favorite flaw is the 17th Amendment. It changed Senatorial appointments from "By the state legislatures" to "By popular vote." And I don't say this simply because a map using the old system in the current day would likely be filibuster-proof red. I say it because it would accurately represent the sentiments and the wishes of the people, most generally.

I agree for a different reason. Senators used to represent the state more directly, and the citizens less directly. States' rights have been greatly weakened by direct citizen election.

Today, Senators can buy votes with promises of bringing home the bacon. They buy our votes using our credit cards, in effect. But under the original system, Senators were accountable to the states' legislatures. Those state legislators would have their own selfish desires, which are satisfied when the state retains more powers. Thus the federal Senators would be motivated to protect states' rights rather than expand federal powers and spending.

For the American people, its purpose is wonderful. However, the enemies of liberty have been successful in using the Constitution to weaponize against us. Infiltrate, Indoctrinate and Exterminate all under our own freedoms granted to us by the same document we celebrate.

I think the lack of term limits is the biggest flaw in the Constitution. And I think they didn't put in term limits because they did not conceive of the the professional political class.

I do not think that the Commerce Clause is a flaw. Congress should have the right to regulate commerce between the states. The problem with the Commerce Clause is that the courts have interpreted it too broadly, to the extreme.

Another flaw is the lack of clear definition of citizen. I don't believe that the founders intended what is now being called "birthright" citizenship. That came about after the 14th amendment which wasn't it's intent either.

“The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” the Trump executive-order reads. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Ding, ding, ding! Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

That foreign born citizens are eligible to serve in congress and allowed to work on congressional staffs.

Silent