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There is now a pressing need for some constitutional amendments. This is the introductory page where each proposed amendment is briefly named with a short description. A complete page is devoted to each amendment and a link provided to the page.

Comments and suggestions are explicitly solicited.

Citizens United versus FEC

The Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission, 21 January 2010, is an unmitigated disaster. There is evidence from history that the concepts brought about by big money and big companies having political power played major roles in the downfall of Rome and of the city/state of Venice. Please visit that page here.

SCOTUS Is Wrong

A larger topic is this: What can or should be done when the Supreme Court is wrong? Under our current constitution, despite all claims to the contrary, there is no check and balance upon the Supreme Court. The members are selected by the President and confirmed by the Senate. After that, they are essentially free to rule over Congress, the president, and the people of these United States as they see fit. Without checks and balances.

Yes, we do have impeachment and conviction by Congress. To date, only one member of the court, Justice Samual Chase, has been impeached, but was not convicted by the Senate. A majority of the House is required, but two-thirds of the Senate is required. This is a quite high bar to meet.

The question becomes, what path of action might be possible when the Supreme Court is wrong?

This concept was noted by the Anti-Federalist as discussed at this site : here

A specific Anti-Federalist papers is found here , paper XI, signed as Brutus which mentions the Supreme Court.

The next paper to be written will be an essay suggesting what might be done. A leading option is that some majority of the thirteen appellate courts can write an opinion and shall have the authority to require the Supreme Court to revisit a decision and further require that the court rule in accordance with specific instructions issued by the appellate decision. The details are too involved for this web page introduction, but a paper will soon be written.

Supreme Court Membership

The Republican majority Senate near the end of Obama's tenure broke precedence and behaved very badly. The majority leader refused to consider a nominee for almost one entire year. The Senate, over several decades and guided by conservatives, has succeeded in packing the Supreme Court with conservative judges. In recent years the court has, in the opinion of possibility the majority of citizens, behaved badly and made some flat out wrong decisions.

At the heart of this problem is the process of nominating and approving new members of the court. This paper presents some possibilities to remedy the problem. Some of these suggestions can be implemented without a Constitutional amendment. Some cannot. The suggestions are not guaranteed to resolve the problem(s), but they can mitigate it. Please visit that page here.

Presidential Pardon

The constitution very carefully instituted a system of checks and balances with the three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial. The presidential pardon is not subject to a check and balance. The 45th resident of the oval office made it clear that he would use the power of the pardon for his personal benefits at the expence of this country. We must presume that a future president will eventually do the same. Please visit that page here.

More Political Checks

While the authors of the Constitution emphasized checks and balances, they did not put sufficient explicit checks into the Constitution. They did the best they could do under the circumstances, but, recent bad behaving politicians have shown that there is more that should be done. Please visit that essay here.

Additional Amendments