An even worse constitution than the US: California

[Mark Graber]

Does anyone attach any significance to the basic fact that a) California's constitution is younger than the Constitution of the United States, b) the particular provision that seemed to cause a good deal of the problem is much younger than any significant amendment to the United States constitution and c) that Californians gained this particular provision because the California Constitution is easier to amend than the Constitution of the United States.

The following strikes me as interesting empirical questions, one to which I do not know the answer.  Looking at the universe of state constitutional amendments over the past thirty years, does any consensus exist that as a whole the amendments have a) improved the constitution, b) weakened the constitution or c) had random effects.  We should place great emphasis on structural amendments, since, as many of us have pointed out, it may well be that states with similar political cultures get the same result whether or not there is, say, a state ERA.  Similarly, how would we rate constitutional change in states that have easier or less easy to amend constitutions.

Mark A. Graber