Abstract
“Is America by nature a violent society?” This question is posed at the beginning of this chapter (“Restructuring by Rewriting Or Towards a More Responsible Government: Remedies I (The What)”) and critical to a discussion of “the what” of constitutional change because it brings to the forefront an overarching concern: Is structural change of the kind being called for in this text possible in the absence of violent revolution or crisis? In the fervent hope it is, this chapter moves from focusing on the mechanisms for change included in the Constitution by the Framers (Chapter 9) to the types of structural reforms that have been called for by various scholars and advocates throughout the years—in particular, in the post-Reconstruction era. To this end, the chapter includes ten specific reform proposals called for by reformers going back to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story and President Woodrow Wilson and continuing to reformers in the modern era such as Lloyd Cutler and James Sundquist.
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Sheehan, J. (2021). Restructuring by Rewriting or Toward a More Responsible Government: Remedies I (The What). In: American Democracy in Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62281-7_10
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