When a constitution reaches a crisis, should amendments be made to address it?  That’s what happens in many constitutional democracies around the world, but the United States has not had a constitutional amendment for thirty years. Article V of the U.S. Constitution, requiring two thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states to amend it, makes our constitution nearly impossible to change in the twenty-first century. In Episode 5 on Article V, Constitutional Crisis Hotline explores alternative amendment processes from other constitutional democracies as well as the history of amending and failing to amend) the U.S. Constitution.

Zachary Elkins is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas-Austin.  Professor Elkins’ research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity. He is co-author of The Endurance of National Constitutions, and is working on a new book,Steal this Constitution: The Drift and Mastery of Constitutional Design. Professor Elkins co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the website Constitute, which provides resources and analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies.

Jill Lepore is David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at the New Yorker Magazine, where she writes about American history, law, literature, and politics. She is the author of many award-winning books, including the international bestseller, These Truths: A History of the United States(2018). Her latest book is IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future,, longlisted for the National Book Award. She is currently working on a study of the history of attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution, and is the director of the Amend Project.

Discussed in this episode:

Jill Lepore’s recent essay, “The United States’ Unamendable Constitution,” The New Yorker, Oct. 26, 2022

Law professors’ draft of a new amendment rule for the United States, Article VIII of The Democracy Constitution, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, June 2021 (and Julie’s justification of it, in “Opening the Paths of Constitutional Change”)