The Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University and the National Constitution Center present a discussion of the amendments to the Constitution proposed by the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Drafting Project. This pathbreaking initiative asked three teams of progressive, libertarian, and conservative scholars to convene for an online constitutional convention. After a week of dialogue, deliberation, and compromise, the ideologically diverse delegates agreed on proposals for five constitutional amendments, ranging from term limits for Supreme Court justices to resurrecting the legislative veto and making it easier for national majorities to amend the Constitution.
In a conversation moderated by NCC President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen, leaders of the three teams—Caroline Fredrickson of Georgetown Law School and senior fellow at the Brennan Center; Ilan Wurman of Arizona State University's Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; and Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute—discuss the amendments and the next steps for constitutional reform. Stefanie Lindquist, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University, provides welcome remarks.
This program is presented in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
Video
Participants
Stefanie Lindquist is executive director of the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University, where she is also a professor of law and political science in the School of Global Politics and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. Her prior service at ASU includes heading ASU's Global Academic Initiatives as senior vice president in the Office of the Provost; deputy provost and vice president for academic affairs; and Foundation Professor of Law and Political Science.
Caroline Fredrickson is a distinguished visitor from practice at Georgetown law Center and a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. Before joining Georgetown, she served as the president of the American Constitution Society. In 2021, she was appointed a member of the President’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Fredrickson is also the leader of the Progressive Team for the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Drafting Project and a Senior Congressional Fellow at the Stennis Center.
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. He previously served as executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute, director of Cato's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and publisher of Cato's journal Supreme Court Review. Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court.
Ilan Wurman is an associate professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. His academic writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, and the Texas Law Review, among other journals. He is the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- National Constitution Center, Constitution Drafting Project
- National Constitution Center, Constitution Drafting Project, "The Proposed Amendments"
- Marcia Coyle, “Five Constitutional Amendments | Costly Failure to Recuse | A Judge's View of Racism,” Law.com
- Henry Gass, “Solution for ideological division: Revising the Constitution?” The Christian Science Monitor
- Jill Lepore, “The United States’ Unamendable Constitution,” The New Yorker
- Walter Olson, “Constitutional Amendments with Cross-Ideological Appeal?” Cato at Liberty blog
- “National Constitution group touts amendment for 18-year Supreme Court terms,” The Carolina Journal
- Jeffrey Rosen and Sal Khan, “How ideological foes united on ideas for amending the Constitution,” The Washington Post
- Timothy Sandefur, “A Libertarian Constitution?” The Goldwater Institute: Freedom blog
- Ilya Shapiro, “Could we ever agree on a new constitutional amendment?” The Washington Examiner: Restoring America
- Ilya Somin, “Constitution Drafting project highlights areas of potential consensus on constitutional reform,” Constitution Daily blog
- Jeffrey Rosen, “What if we wrote the Constitution today?” The Atlantic
- Bob Zadek and Caroline Fredrickson, “The Progressive Constitution,” The Bob Zadek Show
- Caroline Fredrickson, "Three Key Takeaways from the Brennan Center’s Symposium on Constitutional Amendments," American Promise
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This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
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