Amending America: If We Love the Constitution So Much, Why Do We Keep Trying to Change It?

by Jerome Agel and R.B. Bernstein

Book Overview

Even as we marvel at the grandeur of our constitutional system, we can't resist tinkering with it. Amending America tells the dramatic story of how, over the past 206 years, the American people have reshaped the Constitution to meet the country's changing needs. It describes how we have adopted 27 amendments since 1789-and debated and rejected 10,000 more.

A provocative examination of one of America's most important yet least-known democratic...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0700607153
• ISBN13: 9780700607150
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding book on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights

I am disappointed to see only one review of this book (repeated two more times). This book was nominated for the Pulitzer, Parker and Bancroft book prizes as was Mr. Bernstein's book "Are We to Be a Nation?" Mr. Bernstein is a professor at New York Law School and gives the reader a scholarly but highly readable and easily understandable treatise on our Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights IS about "individual rights" and the author explains in detail why this is so. This book should be required reading for any college course on the U.S. Constitution in my opinion and for any citizen wanting to understand what America is all about.

The basis of a landmark case in the Philippines

I drafted the Supreme Court petition questioning the legality of a people's initiative which purportedly sought to amend the 1987 Philippine Constitution which was our first democratic constitution after the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos was exiled (Santiago v. COMELEC). One of my main references for the petition was this book of which I am deeply indebted for valuable research in U.S. constitutional law and legal history. It discussed exhaustively and in a very provoking manner, the challenges posed by amendments to the immutable nature of the constitution as fundamental law of the land. Our petition, which sought to deny the proposed amendments by way of a people's initiative, differentiated between piecemeal amendments and a revision of the Constitution. I argued that if the amendments sought would ultimately change the form of government, then it should be considered a revision. Our petition was granted by the Supreme Court and became a landmark case in Philippine history. It also found its way as a bar exam question. This book was my guidepost as I drafted the petition in the wee hours of morning in view of the urgency for a Supreme Court ruling on the matter and to avert an impending national crisis and another coup d'etat. The legal luminaries of this country have hailed Richard Bernstein and Jerome Agel's book as the most persuasive and thought provoking treatise on the subject.

The basis of a landmark case in the Philippines

I drafted the Supreme Court petition questioning the legality of a people's initiative which purportedly sought to amend the 1987 Philippine Constitution which was our first democratic constitution after the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos was exiled (Santiago v. COMELEC). One of my main references for the petition was this book of which I am deeply indebted for valuable research in U.S. constitutional law and legal history. It discussed exhaustively and in a very provoking manner, the challenges posed by amendments to the immutable nature of the constitution as fundamental law of the land. Our petition, which sought to deny the proposed amendments by way of a people's initiative, differentiated between piecemeal amendments and a revision of the Constitution. I argued that if the amendments sought would ultimately change the form of government, then it should be considered a revision. Our petition was granted by the Supreme Court and became a landmark case in Philippine history. It also found its way as a bar exam question. This book was my guidepost as I drafted the petition in the wee hours of morning in view of the urgency for a Supreme Court ruling on the matter and to avert an impending national crisis and another coup d'etat. The legal luminaries of this country have hailed Richard Bernstein and Jerome Agel's book as the most persuasive and thought provoking treatise on the subject.