March 21, 2023

Amendment Reform in America and Abroad

55 minutes

The National Constitution Center and the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University present a comparative discussion of how democracies amend their constitutions, at home and around the world. A panel of distinguished scholars, including Wilfred Codrington of Brooklyn Law School, Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Rosalind Dixon of the University of New South Wales, survey the constitutional amendment process around the world to cast light on our debates in the U.S. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

This program is presented in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

Additional Resources

Jeffrey Sutton, Who Decides: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation

National Constitution Center, Interactive Constitution, Article V

Rosalind Dixon and David Landau, "Tiered Constitutional Design," George Washington Law Review

Donald Lutz, "Toward a Theory of Constitutional Amendment," The American Political Science Review

John Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition

John Kowal and Wilfred Codrington, The People's Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company (1895)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)

Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (1949)

Florida Constitution Revision Commission

National Constitution Center, "The Proposed Amendments," Constitution Drafting Project

Switzerland's Constitution of 1999 with Amendments through 2014

Rosalind Dixon and Felix Uhlmann, "The Swiss Constitution and a weak-form unconstitutional amendment doctrine?" International Journal of Constitutional Law

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By National Constitution Center

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