(theme music)
- If we were to create America from scratch today
how would we create our user manual?
And who would write it?.
(inspirational electronic music)
What is the average turnaround time or shelf life
of a constitution internationally?
- Internationally it's only about 17 years
and it's actually going down.
In recent decades it's been only about 12 years.
- And ours has lasted for--
- Over 200 years, right?
- Okay. - Yeah, so.
- Okay, so we're about due?
- Seventeen... well - Ha ha ha.
- that's what some people say actually.
- [Toussaint] Writing or re-writing a constitution
is not a job for the faint of heart.
So I ask you,
Where on this Earth could we find a nation
that is brave enough,
passionate enough,
and maybe even foolish enough
to take on such a challenge?
- My name is Silja Bara Omarsdottir
and I lecture at the faculty of Political Science
at the university of Iceland.
- Thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
(lighthearted music) Let me first ask you,
why did Iceland decide to reform their constitution?
- [Marie] Well in 2008 Iceland had a financial collapse
and a lot of people suggested
that the problems that we had as a society
would have been avoided
if we'd had a more modern constitution.
The Icelanders got their own constitution
from the King of Denmark in 1874
and then when Iceland became a sovereign republic in 1944
Denmark was then under occupation,
so the constitution was very quickly re-written,
essentially replacing the word King with the word Resident.
- [Toussaint] So now let's jump back to the United States.
("The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa)
When we wrote our constitution
it was done at a constitutional convention
in which influential men got together
hashed out their ideas
and once they had a working document
they got approved by at least nine of the states.
Just like that, the constitution was born.
Today we still have two processes
for proposing new constitutional amendments
both of which require the participation of the states
before they can pass. (relaxing music)
In the first version
which has been used to create our current amendments
Congress comes up with an idea
and then 3/4 of the states need to approve it.
In the second version
which has never been used in American history
the states could call an Article V Convention
which essentially allows them to get together
and propose whatever amendments they want.
After that if they can get approval from 3/4 of the states
those amendments become law.
- Either Congress has to pass a law
- Mm hmm. - and send it
to the state legislatures
to change parts of the constitution
or the states can initiate a request to Congress
to call a constitutional convention.
And if we wanted to do the whole constitution
that's probably the route
because you'd want to have
a time for people to meet and talk
just like they did when they were framing the constitution.
- Many scholars have argued
that an Article V Convention
would border on chaos (politician yelling)
because there are no rules in the constitution
about how a convention like this should operate.
It would technically be above the Congress
and even possibly above the courts
and pretty much anything could come out of it.
At the same time
it's not that fundamentally different
from how we wrote our current constitution
in the first place.
So if we were ever going to re-write the constitution
on a large scale
this is probably how we'd do it.
- Do you think we should be re-write the constitution?
- I am skeptical about whether
it would provide any more human rights
than it does.
I think there may be as many people
who would try to roll back some of the rights
that these minorities have
as that would try to extend them.
- But for us this might not matter.
We're talking from scratch.
Which is why, if I may,
I'd like to do a quick dramatic reading
from the constitution:
(beep)
(beep)
(beep)
Now let me pause it here
because as you can probably guess
that's not the constitution,
as in the U.S. constitution.
It was actually written in 2008 for the Republic of Kosovo.
(rewinding audio)
But here's the amazing part;
one of the people who played a key role
in writing this document
was a lawyer living in Minnesota.
- [John] I was privileged to have the opportunity
to work with people in Kosovo
to draft their constitution
when they became independent in 2008.
- [Toussaint] That is Chief United States District Judge
John Tunheim
and I met with him at his chambers
to ask you more about this constitution.
- [John] It's a little warped right now
but that's what it looks like.
- Wow.
- You know when the Soviet Union broke up
- Mm hmm. - there were
how many, what, 14 or 15 different countries
- Yeah. - that needed to write
new constitutions, - Yeah.
- And they did.
And some of those countries had had
fundamental changes in government since then
so they've written a new constitutions
out of that experience. - Mmm.
- [John] There's a lot of constitutions
that have been written in the last 25 years.
- Judge Tunheim's work
represents something kind of fascinating in today's world;
legal professionals being commissioned
to turn a country's goals into a legal document.
But is this right for us?
Because, let's be honest,
I'm guessing that when we asked
if we were making America from scratch today
who would be writing our constitution
you probably didn't picture someone like Judge John Tunheim.
Maybe thought it was going to be a little more like this:
- Oh, you promised!
- You promised, that's not fair.
- It's not a question of fairness, it's separation of--
- Go back to Russia, commie!
- Hey you go back to Russia. (crowd murmuring)
(intense music) - This brings us
to one of the real tensions in our country today:
Who should be writing the rules?
When our country was founded, as we all know,
it was influential men like James Madison
who put the actual pen to paper.
And today, well, there are parallels.
So what if we really broke the mold
and decided to take a new approach,
like crowd sourcing?
It's diverse, it's inclusive, everybody weighs in
and the people finally have a voice.
That actually brings us right back to Iceland.
- So a lot of people have said
that the Icelandic constitution was crowdsourced
and I wouldn't really say that.
In 2010 the decision was made
to have a constitutional assembly
elected by the population
to write a proposal for a new constitution.
This group of 25 people,
we always sat around and we make the decisions
as to what text would actually be included.
Every time we made a proposal
we would present that and plug it on Facebook
and publish it online
and we would ask people to send us comments,
to leave comments on the document
and tell us what they thought
but people couldn't actually write anything
other than the 25 people who were in the council.
- Ultimately Iceland's new constitution
was not officially adopted.
However it was a good example of when the country says,
"Hey we need to try something new."
And just by having the conversation
it led to a lot of good policy ideas.
- I wouldn't say that it was a waste of time.
It actually created at least a short lived debate
about what it is that we want to be
and what our values are as a society.
Reminding the people and the government
that there are things that remain to be fixed.
- So what would it be like if we decided
to follow the example of Iceland?
What ideas would you fight for
to include in a new constitution
and what elements would you leave behind?
Hey everybody, it's Toussaint Morrison.
Thank you so much for watching this episode.
On our next episode
we're gonna talk about
if our data should have rights.
If you have something to say about that
submit a video to the link in the description
and we might show it on the next show.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe.
This program is made possible by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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