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The Importance Of The Constitution In The United States

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The founding fathers originally came together in 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation, but instead rewrote the entire constitution. They defined the responsibilities of each branch of the federal government, and assumed that Congress would fill in any holes within the constitution as they arose by proposing amendments (Lessig, 2014). According to Thomas Jefferson, “No society can make a perpetual constitution” (Lessig, 2014). However, in the 228 years of the Constitution’s existence there have only been 27 amendments, the first 12 occurring within the first 15 years of its adoption, (Urofsky & Finkelman, 2008, p. 97). Due to the changes in society and the flawed system we follow now though, it is time that we adopt Jefferson’s philosophy and make changes to our Constitution. …show more content…
The framers wrote the Constitution in such a way that it would “meet the changing needs of the nation” (Urofsky & Finkelman, 2008, p. 97) and to quote Bob Dylan, “The times they are a changing” (Division of Elections, 2012). However, the Constitution is failing to keep up with these changing times. This failure has put our judicial branch in a position to make decisions on issues that should be addressed through our constitution. What’s even more telling that our constitution is flawed is that when many scholars help draft constitutions for other nations “the American example is being rejected …” (Lessig, 2014) in favor of other models such as parliamentary systems. In order to properly serve today’s society, the Constitution needs to be further

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