Toward a more perfect Constitution: Danielle Allen
It's centuries-old and, in the eyes of many, out of touch with contemporary America. Five scholars suggest repairs.
news.harvard.edu
I think we should expand the frame of the question to include laws that have changed the operation of the Constitution. Sometimes the best way to fix the Constitution is to fix those laws.
One significant problem was the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act, which capped the size of Congress at its current number of 435. The body had previously grown with every decennial census. It was supposed to grow. Its relative proportions and geographic weightings were supposed to adjust with the population as the population shifted. But for the last 100 years, that principle of flexibility and elasticity has been abandoned. I believe it’s time to let Congress grow again so that it can meaningfully shift in shape with the population. Both the German Bundestag and the U.K. Parliament are larger than our House of Representatives, even though their populations are roughly a quarter or a fifth of ours.
A larger House would put representatives back in closer proximity to those whom they represent. It would increase the number of office holders and therefore the likelihood that we could meaningfully diversify who serves. Perhaps most importantly, it would also restore a principle of elasticity and flexibility to the Electoral College. The number of electors flows from the combination of the number of Congresspeople (the popular sovereignty principle) and from the number of Senators (the union-of-states principle). If Congress could grow, the current overweighting of the Electoral College to less-populous places would be rebalanced. California, Florida, Texas, and New York could get their fair share. This would rectify the legitimacy problem currently developing around the Electoral College and give us more responsive representation.
