[SllX]

Strictly speaking it’s not overly necessary. We already adopted the Constitution.

The purpose of the papers was to sell the Constitution to the people of the States to get their States to ratify it. Getting someone to read them will give them a fuller appreciation for a lot of the “why” behind the Constitution, but I would be happier if we could get more people to understand what it is.

[patmorgan23]

But also a lot of the "why" is out of date and has changed in the last 200 years since the constitution was ratified. In that time it's been amended 27 times, the nation went through an extremely bloody civil war and we've seen massive changes in business and technology.

And frankly as a legal document the constitution is a pretty poor one. It's incredibly vague, it doesn't define any of the terms it uses and is incredibly hard to amend. It certainly has served us well in the past but many of our current political strife stems from its deficiencies.

[SllX]

I mean, it is amendable as you pointed out. The root cause of our political strife is probably something no constitution can do anything about because if it could, we could just pass any changes want to make as an amendment.

Well we haven’t amended it in a while, and the most recent one was approved by Congress at the same time as the Bill of Rights (was one of the articles of the Bill of Rights) and ratified by enough States in the 20th century mostly because a guy got a C on a term paper and was understandably pissed because his paper was correct. That’s because at the end of the day when all is said and done, we as a Union have not been convinced that we should amend it again yet, and replacing it would have similar hurdles.

EDIT: Also feel like I should point out the Constitution is clearer than people think it is. Largely disagreements in how to read this or that come down to wanting to read it one way, but not being able to without making in effect a philosophical argument rather than just reading the text. This is not uncommon in the law profession, which is why we have Courts, and Courts can overturn their own precedent and Congress/legislatures can tell them they're wrong by passing a new law.

My favorite example is the 16th amendment:

> The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

This was passed to "clarify" that Congress had this power already, according to Congress; and according to the Supreme Court at the time, they did not. I think the Fuller Court was just wrong on this one because here's what Article I Section 8 (titled "Powers of Congress" but all of Article I covers the legislative power) actually says as it pertains to raising government revenues:

> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Note how before the semicolon, they clearly distinguish between Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, but after the semi-colon they list exactly Duties, Imposts, and Excises which shall be uniform throughout the United States. We didn't need the 16th amendment for Congress to collect income tax, but a court thought they did, so they passed an amendment. Congress can do that kind of thing when they want to because they are the most powerful branch of government.

[Veserv]

The problem with the income tax was actually Article 1, Section 9:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

It explicitly bans direct taxes except for a fixed tax per person. A income tax which directly taxes individuals almost certainly constitutes a direct tax by any reasonable interpretation.

The 16th amendment directly repudiates that section and grants the explicit power to levy a income tax.