October 23, 2020
Hello ,
The American Constitution has jumped into the limelight this election year, taking the stage in everyday conversation in a way I don't remember happening before.
With the electoral college out of step with the popular vote in recent presidential elections
and the nomination of "originalist" Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, you could say the very soul of our constitution is up for debate.
Some believe we could decipher our Founding Father's precise meaning and intent, others believe our constitution should be a living document.
Here to tell us about "fault lines in the Constitution" is author and friend Cynthia Levinson to tell us about her new book for kids. It's what the publishing industry is calling a graphic novel, though it's a nonfiction book. Graphic panels (like our old cartoons) help make complex ideas easier to understand for kids and adults.
Welcome, Cynthia!
A Graphic Look at the Constitution
We’re all too aware these days of the connections between 2020-21 and 1918-19. Viruses will always be with us, and, alas, novel ones that threaten our health and well-being will very likely recur.
People have also seen similarities between autocratic leaders around the world today and those in the 1930s-1940s in Germany and elsewhere.
Similarly, for many years, my husband, Sanford Levinson, who is a constitutional scholar, has said, while looking at contemporary domestic political issues, “Follow the dots.” Follow them where? To our Constitution.
To tell you the truth, although I had read all of his books, I didn’t fully understand what he meant until he and I wrote a book for young readers together.
Researching and writing the books, I realized he was right: many issues in the news today can be traced directly back to what the Framers of our Constitution set in motion in Philadelphia in 1787.
We’re careful not to criticize the Framers. The handiwork they wrought—the government they created out of their reading, their negotiations, and their imaginations—was a marvel for the time.
For better or worse—and, as you can tell from our title, we believe, often for worse—this document has remained largely unchanged. Let me give you some examples of ways that 1787 still reverberates in 2020 and, undoubtedly, beyond.
One of the ways, which we actually wrote about, deals with an epidemic that nearly became a global pandemic.
To show the link between 1787 and now, every chapter starts with a story; most of the stories are recent.
In “At War with Bugs: Habeas Corpus,” we talk about an American nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone in 2014.
She had the misfortunate of returning to the Newark, New Jersey airport the very day that state’s governor, Chris Christy, imposed an unnecessarily restrictive quarantine.
Kaci Hickox was incarcerated in a tent in a hospital parking lot, and she sued for the great writ—that is, the right to be released—as promised in the Constitution.
For better or worse, our current federal government has not instituted national policies to stem the spread of COVID-19.
A future government might do so and would need to balance country-wide protections against a disease versus constitutionally guaranteed individual rights.
But, probably at the top of everyone’s list right now is the Electoral College. Why—WHY?!—do we have an Electoral College? No other country in the world has anything similar, and it wreaks havoc with our presidential campaigns and elections.
This really breaks down to two questions: Why did the Framers create it? And, why is it still hanging around?
How to elect the president—which was a novel idea at the time—hamstrung the participants at the Constitutional Convention for months. The method depended on what the executive’s duties would be and how he (they assumed it would be a he) would relate to Congress. Until
they worked out these details, they couldn’t decide who would choose him—the people or the legislature.
James Madison came up with the last-minute proposal of electors, which would allow far-flung voters who had barely heard of the candidates to choose the winner for them. His plan would also allow the House to pick the president and the Senate the vice president in case no one got a
majority.
As we say in the book, that worked fine as long as George Washington was president.
I won’t go into all the mayhem this arrangement has caused over the centuries, except to say that the Electoral College has chosen the less popular candidate five times, so far.
So, why do we continue to tolerate its existence? Because of another fault line (my husband’s “favorite,” if favorite means most destructive)—the difficulty of amending the Constitution. It’s so complex and daunting, I’ll let Ally’s wonderful graphics lead you through the process.
Thanks to First Second, you can read all of C hapter 12: the college with no courses or credits: the electoral college AND Chapter 19: at war with bugs: habeas corpus right here!
In all, we discuss twenty fault lines. Unlike habeas corpus, none of them deals with rights.
All of them address the structural underpinnings of our governmental system. For instance, while most of us tend to take such matters as our bicameral legislature, a Senate with two senators per state regardless of the size of the population of each state, and the president’s veto power for granted, all of these turn out to have deeply unjust ramifications.
Somehow, we skipped impeachment, which surely belongs in the next edition, if there is one.
Springing off the topic of the constitution...to the election at hand.
“THE TRUTH OF the matter is there’s not been one America, but several Americas. We’re essentially a federation of separate, rival nations — rival regional cultures — with different characteristics that date all the way back to the colonial period.”
The job of resolving or repairing the fault line in America is much larger and harder than I'd like to think. This article gave me hope that it can be accomplished. The sooner we start, the sooner a new generation can enjoy a holiday
dinner without bloodshed.
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To find out more about my books, how I help students, teachers, librarians and writers visit my website at www.MaryCronkFarrell.com.
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