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Larry Sabato - professional amateur constitutional scholar

The most shameless, self-promoting, media diva in political science has released yet another book. Larry Sabato has released A More Perfect Constitution, which contains 23 suggestions for constitutional amendments to improve our democracy. Most of his ideas can be summed up as "radically stupid." For example:

• Expand the House of Representatives to 1,000 to make legislators more accountable to the people. Earth the Sabato, if you want to see a resurgance of retail politics in congressional elections, you would need at least 2,000 House members. Setting the size 1,000 just increases the number of earmarks and campaign contributions without any real benefit.


• Establish a new 6-year, 1-time presidential term with the option for the president to seek 2 additional years in an up/down referendum of the American people. Referendum elections? Yeah that worked out great in California.


• Revise the Electoral College by granting more populated states additional electors, to preserve the benefits of the College while minimizing the chances a president will win without a majority of the popular vote. As much as I would like to see Democrats get more votes in CA, NY, NJ, MA, and IL, this is an incredibly dumb idea. How do you justify this preferential treatment to the slew of tiny states?

Three of his four ideas for improving the judiciary are similarly retarded:

• Eliminating lifetime tenure for federal judges in favor of non-renewable 15-year terms for all federal judges. Apparantly judges having experience is a bad thing? I wasn't aware of this.


• Set a mandatory retirement age for all federal judges.


• Expand the size of the Supreme Court from 9 to 12 to be more representative.

Where have I heard these ideas before? Oh yeah...

Plus, I know political scientists are often not good with numbers. But 12 is an even number. Which means many 5-4 decisions will become 6-6 decisions in the future. And the lower court's ruling would stand. Why bother having a Supreme Court if it isn't allowed to be decisive? It would ruin the institutional legitimacy if it produced deadlocked decisions. The American public would view it with the same degree of cynicism as the other gridlocked branches.

AARRGGHH!!! The ironic thing is, on Sabato's website, he invites people to vote on his proposals. And most of them have been rejected. I wonder why?

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on January 23, 2008 (boomark / email).