People are mad about the recent Supreme Court decision on the right of corporations to influence political campaigns. Lawrence Lessig is even calling for a convention to restore our democracy, which he insists is broken. The movement has even drafted a proposed constitutional amendment.
This pattern (court decision -> outrage -> proposed amendment) happens every few years. Well, I'm sure it happens more often than that, but it actually gains some traction every few years. The last one I recall was around eminent domain and the Kelo case.
In any case, I agree with Lessig that we should call a convention:
"If 2/3ds of the legislatures of the states demand it, Congress must call a convention. That convention then must meet and deliberate about amendments to the constitution. If it agrees, it then proposes amendments to the states. 3/4ths of the states must then ratify any amendment before becomes law. Thus, 12 states of 50 have the power to veto any change, meaning no change could happen unless it appealed to a solid group of Red States and a solid group of Blue."
However, I think the scope of that convention needs to be much bigger. Yes, we should call a convention, but it just shouldn't be about this one problem, one amendment.
If we're going to call a constitutional convention, we should really consider a host of amendments, i.e. a modern Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights was ratified, in part, because it was many amendments, not one. In the same way, proposing many together would actually give the movement legs, which other amendments have failed to capture by themselves.
A more substantive argument is that our Constitution is need of a lot of amendments to clarify things. Corporations' status as people/citizens and eminent domain are two good examples.
Equally good (and popular) are finally spelling out the right to privacy, a right to eduction, and raising the standard of gender and ethnic equality to that of race and religion. Less popular but possibilities are a social security trust fund, no military draft, and direct election of the president. There are of course many other possibilities as well.
I think people dislike the Supreme Court so much because they think they just make stuff up. That's of course not true (read opinions), but there are a whole host of issues that the Constitution really doesn't have much to say about. In those cases, they do try to make strong logical arguments (mostly), but they aren't really backed up the way should be (with the Constitution). A modern Bill of Rights can help us get back that foundation.
