Crowdsourced State Constitutional Revisions Can Revive Our Democracy

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Rutgers University Law Review

Abstract

State constitutions will continue to fall short of their important role in the U.S. democratic system absent revision. Some constitutions can only be defined as primitive, having been created in the nineteenth century and only amended since then. Some are littered with legislative pronouncements ill-suited for a constitution. Other barriers have also reduced the role of state constitutions in their respective state democratic systems.

This paper seeks to pave the way for a single state to use participatory tools in an effort to revise their constitution via a constitutional convention. Just as the successes (and failures) in places like Iceland sparked a number of other democracies to experiment with participatory tools in substantive democratic processes, one state going through this transformative process could inspire several others to pursue their own version of such revision.

First Page

1463

Last Page

1528

Publication Date

Summer 2022

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