Amending the U. S. Constitution

Solution Preview

Hello and Welcome to Brainmass! I have provided you with guidelines to complete your paper with ease. This will give you a clear insight into the porposed amendment if it were to take place. Good Luck!!

Amending the U. S. Constitution

I will briefly go through what it takes to amend the Constitution first and then focus on answering if the Constitution should be amended to give voters the right to recall an officer in the legislative branch, executive branch, or judicial branch before the officer's term expires.

Amending the Constitution - what does it take?

Article V of the US Constitution provides that amendments can be proposed either by Congress, with a two thirds vote of both houses, or by a national convention requested by two-thirds of the state legislatures. The latter was created to protect against a situation in which Congress itself was reluctant to change problems with its own laws. Amendments are ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by conventions in three fourths of the states. Only the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed Prohibition in 1933, was adopted by state conventions (Soifer, Hoffman, & Voss, 2001).

Since the enactment of the Bill of Rights, the amendment process has been used scarcely. While numerous proposals have been proposed in Congress, only a few have gone to the states for action. Over the last 200 years, 17 amendments to the Constitution have been ratified (Fonder & Shaffery, 2005). Six of these have failed to win enough support - most recently, the Equal Rights Amendment, and an amendment to give the District of Columbia full representation in Congress. The other amendments either address how the government operates or expand equality.

Should the Constitution be amended to give voters the right to recall an officer in the legislative branch, executive branch, or judicial branch before the officer's term expires?

Lets first answer the 'can we' part before we get to the 'should we'. According to the US Constitution, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or ...