Jesus Duran
2668430
July 9, 2018
Over the long years the constitution has been established, scholars begin to question the system
our founding fathers had put together. Lately, our two dominant political parties have been in serious
conflict with one another and have been manipulating the constitution to their own self-interest. Scholars
and political figures clash between debates on the Powers of Congress, the President, and the Supreme
Court. They see the system as undemocratic and is starting to fail. Scholars see the Constitution unclear to
some on what is being stated directly such as the First Amendment defining free speech. Let us begin
with Jeffery Toobin’s explanation of several Scholars and their issues regarding the Constitution.
In the article Our Broken Constitution, Journalist Jeffery Toobin discusses why scholars such as
Stanford Levinson argue their viewpoint on why they reject the Senate and Orrin Hatch’s current take on
partisanship in the Senate. Toobin explains on how Levinson, a progressive critic of the Constitution, has
seen the role of the Senate to be undemocratic, because of its misleading power between large and small
states over the years. Levinson believed that the Senate’s initial purpose was used to bring power to the
south in order to keep slavery from being abolished. Levinson believes on how “the creation of the Senate
was the original sin of the Constitution” and “the most obvious offence was that the power reserved to the
slave states insured the survival of slavery” (Toobin p. 2). On the other hand, Toobin addresses
Republican Senator of Utah Orrin Hatch’s take on the debate between law professors seem to be
theoretical. Hatch as been known to work with democrats in order to come to a common understanding of
any legislation. Now Hatch sees the Senate had become noncooperative ever since the Democratic Party
became the minority abusing the filibuster and the Republican Party had also shared a part of the Senate’s
failure. Hatch states that “Democrats who first began to abuse the filibuster, when they were the minority”
and also “acknowledged that the poisonous political atmosphere within the Republican Party has also
contributed to the breakdown in the Senate” (Toobin p.7).
Along with all these instances that continue in the Senate, Toobin brings the matter of how the
president can appoint federal officials when the entire Senate cannot be in session. Toobin addresses
Article II on how Obama has the ability to use recess appointments in order to fill spots to make his
meetings valid and have less of a debate with Congress. Toobin states that “In the instance of the
N.L.R.B., Obama responded by making recess appointments to fill a quorum at the board” (Toobin p. 8).
Toobin also addresses a defect he found in Article V that makes the Constitution almost impossible to
amend. He finds it undemocratic on how it takes only one-tenth of the country that is represented by
legislators and not the majority of the people to stop the amendment process. Toobin addresses Article V
on how “any amendment must receive the endorsement of two–thirds of the House and the Senate and
three-quarters of the state legislators” (Toobin p. 10).
As Toobin sees the Constitution as undemocratic, in the article War is too deadly for Congress to
keep dodging duty on declaring it, Law Professor Jonathan Turley argues on how Congress is simply
handing down the power to declare war to the president with the new AUMF proposal. Turley stands on
the opposition of the Corker-Kaine proposal or the new AUMF that grants the president to add new
targets to its “hit list” without the discretion of Congress. Turley addresses Article I Section 8 that
