To what extent and why is the constitution very difficult to amend?
The Constitution of the United States is highly unique and unlike many written constitutions, it has remained fundamentally unaltered since its ratification in 1789, and continues to exert itself as major source of authority on the political stage in the US. In effect, the first ten amendments were part of the original Constitution Settlement, thus in the last two hundred years there have been only seventeen amendments. Hence the question continuously arises amongst political academics as to why the Constitution has undergone such little significant change, and still is abided by even in today's highly converse political climate.
The aim of this discussion will be to unearth the roots that hold the US Constitution so securely embedded into the soil of American political culture. I shall begin by briefly accounting for the construction of the Constitution and explain the necessary history that may fit into the argument in terms of explaining how the framers intended the document to be treated by future Americans, and what necessary precautions they took in avoiding an unfavourable future for the country. I shall then explore the document itself and try to find elements that make the Constitution difficult to amend, whilst looking at the actual amendments that have been undertaken since the original ratification of the document itself in 1789. I shall present the evidence discovered and relate it to the discussion continuously throughout the analysis and then follow up with a conclusion on whether the essay has sufficiently proven the difficulty of amending the Constitution and to what extent it might be so.
I shall commence by providing an historical overlook of the how the Constitution was formed, as without this, a further probe into the question would leave the argument without foundation. It must be noted how different the environment the constitution was born out of was from...