"Does the Constitution Work"?

An answer to the question of whether the U.S. Constitution works would seem to be straightforward enough. At least, that is, until we discover how contentious is the answer to the implicit preceding question: For what end was the Constitution designed? Try answering that question and the wheels quickly fall off the bus. The scope of disagreement on the end of the Constitution is sufficiently wide as as to make consensus on whether it works impossible.

Enter my Regent Law School colleague Craig Stern. Stern sidesteps the seemingly intractable discussion of the Constitution's end and asks the question of "for whom?" You can download his enlarged essay published in the Akron Journal of Constitutional Law & Policy by going here. It's only fourteen pages in length so I won't do much to summarize except to say that Stern examines the presuppositions of the Framers with respect to the nature and extent of popular virtue and religion necessary to maintain the republican form of government provided by the Constitution. And, Stern wonders aloud, what can be concluded about the Constitution's workability if those presuppositions no longer hold?

A great piece to get folks thinking about the supra-constitutional fundamentals.