Constitution in the 21th Century in the United States
Constitution of the United States The Constitution Today
The Constitution has endured for more than 200 years, and it continues to shape the country’s most pressing social and political controversies. Some constitutional issues, such as the appropriate balance of authority between the state and federal governments, remain as unsettled as they were when the Constitution was adopted in 1788. Some issues, seemingly settled, are still being tested – for example, the debate over abortion continues. So, too, is the debate over whether the states may curb a proliferation of hate speech that vilifies minority groups. The courts must also adapt and interpret the Constitution to confront issues never anticipated by the framers, such as privacy rights on the Internet.
Sometimes political problems develop that seem impossible to tackle without constitutional change. One such issue, growing since the 1980s, is campaign finance reform. Candidates for president, Congress, and many state offices raise huge sums of money to run for office. The fund-raising practices often cause concern that these leaders will be beholden to special interests when they take office. In 1976 the Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that some limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment and cannot be enforced. In the subsequent two decades political candidates used these exceptions to get around spending caps, all but eliminating any real limit on campaign spending. Stopping these campaign-financing abuses seems to require limits, but the Court’s decision bars such restrictions. The issue remains a continuing source of controversy.
When presidents appoint new members to the Supreme Court, the change in composition of the Court sometimes leads to dramatic turns in constitutional interpretation. One area of interpretation that seems to be changing is the Court’s approach to federalism. For more than a century, the Court consistently maintained the supremacy of the federal government over the states. But in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), a case involving state efforts to limit the terms of members of Congress, four dissenting justices declared in effect that sovereignty rests with the states. Under this reasoning, the federal government’s authority is limited to the powers explicitly granted in the Constitution. The states assume powers assigned to them as well as any powers not mentioned in the Constitution, except those explicitly prohibited. The Court majority rejected this view, but it is entirely possible that the debate that has opened up may ultimately lead to a new definition of federalism, with results that no one today can safely predict. (1)
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