{"id":1526,"date":"2009-10-22T12:10:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T16:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=1526"},"modified":"2009-10-22T12:10:28","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T16:10:28","slug":"californias-cautionary-constitutional-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/1526\/californias-cautionary-constitutional-history\/","title":{"rendered":"California’s Cautionary Constitutional History"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those perturbed by the federal government\u2019s lack of responsiveness to the will of the people, California\u2019s voter initiative process shows the danger of the opposite extreme. Recently, Ronald George, Chief Justice of California\u2019s Supreme Court, questioned the wisdom<\/a> of the state\u2019s constitutional-amendment-by-initiative process. In a speech<\/a> to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, George criticized the ease with which voters can change the fundamental law of California, a practice that has yielded 500 amendments since 1879. To compare, the United States Constitution contains 17 amendments, plus the 10 known as the Bill of Rights, over a time period spanning twice as long.<\/p>\n

George\u2019s lament is that frequent and easy changes to the primary source of law are not the criteria for sustained, peaceful government. Instead, the continuous use of such measures (and the threat of more in the future) renders government dysfunctional by making the legislative process merely the starting point of a policy debate, not its conclusion. Moreover, legal challenges to popularly passed initiatives put judges in the unenviable position of trying to discern the voters\u2019 intent without the benefit of the usual contextual sources (e.g. legislative history, factual findings, committee reports, etc.).\u00a0If California goes forward with calls for a constitutional convention<\/a>, one hopes that the delegates remember the virtue of constraining lawmaking to a system governed by checks and balances, the separation of powers, and representative democracy. As we see with the current White House, though, hope alone won\u2019t ensure a better government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those perturbed by the federal government\u2019s lack of responsiveness to the will of the people, California\u2019s voter initiative process shows the danger of the opposite extreme. Recently, Ronald George, Chief Justice of California\u2019s Supreme Court, questioned the wisdom of the state\u2019s constitutional-amendment-by-initiative process. In a speech to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[339,341,338,337,340],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-bill-of-rights","tag-california-supreme-court","tag-ronald-george","tag-united-states-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}