Expert historian of the Constitution: “Once a constitutional crisis becomes an endemic condition, the term no longer usefully describes our collapsing system….we live in an era of constitutional failure when the relevant institutions cannot fulfill their responsibilities.” Fr @jrakove.bsky.social - ThreadSky

kawulf.bsky.social • 2 days ago

Expert historian of the Constitution: “Once a constitutional crisis becomes an endemic condition, the term no longer usefully describes our collapsing system….we live in an era of constitutional failure when the relevant institutions cannot fulfill their responsibilities.” Fr @jrakove.bsky.social

Reposted from Jack Rakove

This is a subject I have been brooding about for some time. I am grateful to the Washington Monthly for posting this piece.

washingtonmonthly.com/2025/06/27/i...

Comments

thedialectician.bsky.social•2 days ago

We should adopt a new one like this one

davidmack.bsky.social•2 days ago

We need to expel this entire government and start over.

unkaren.bsky.social•2 days ago

MAGA SCOTUS is ILLEGITIMATE

bladedge.bsky.social•2 days ago

But this is what the denizens of the #PariahStatesofAmerica voted for along with cheaper eggs on Nov. 5th 2024 because they're too violent, greedy, selfish, ignorant & stupid to do anything right

rowyourbot.bsky.social•2 days ago

I wonder what SCOTUS justices tell the conservative jurists that don’t believe Trump can be a king. Likely something like ‘oh, we’re saving America because if we are too hard on wild man Trump he will cause a constitutional crisis…we need to give him an out…’ They killed the constitution though

gacyclist.bsky.social•2 days ago

What's stunning is just how fast the trump regime achieved it, but then gop congress facilitated it.

sithan.bsky.social•2 days ago

The problem of the State has ceased to be political and has become technological. And whoever controls the main technology controls everything: the government, the State and even the privilege of declaring war.

sithan.bsky.social•2 days ago

The automation of the decision-making process has transformed politics into a shadow theater and political leaders into puppets. The path that humanity is treading is now becoming darker and more full of terrors than a winter night in Cumae, Delphi or Siwa in the fourth century BC.

rosieogrady53.bsky.social•2 days ago

A refusual to acknowledge faults in our guardrails & a dangerous lack of imagination prevented too many (institutionalist) Const scholars & legal experts from stopping this Coup.
Many of us warned & were labled "hysterical" "alarmists."
Glad to see eyes finally opening.
https://bsky.app/profile/rosieogrady53.bsky.social/post/3lgiulcqpz22a

seltsamerweise.bsky.social•2 days ago

What the author does not lay out explicitly, I will attempt:

There is no restoring the previous constitution after a constitutional collapse. NOR SHOULD THERE BE A RESTORATION.

These last 10 years have laid bare the major flaws in our government; to restore those flaws would be foolishness.

godfreyforoh.bsky.social•2 days ago

Cannot? More like do not in the case of Congress and the Supreme Court.

alphast.bsky.social•2 days ago

I hate to say it, but a Constitution that allows this to happen is poorly designed in the first place. The entire point of a Constitution is to create the conditions to prevent this. As I have written many times, the US Constitution was woefully obsolete and spectacularly failed at its primary role.

plunderdog903.bsky.social•2 days ago

I hear what you are saying but I do t think even the framers could envision an entire branch abdicating all its power all in the service of a cult. Trump should have been a VERY EASY constitutional fix.

axels15.bsky.social•2 days ago

Not sure I agree here - they knew the history of political upheaval in places like England and France far more clearly than we.

They also knew of political leaders whose corruption caused the downfall of governments.

Some things they can't have predicted, but these... Hmm

alphast.bsky.social•2 days ago

Of course. I don't mean that the US Constitution was obsolete from the start. For a while, the amendment system functioned as intended. But the extreme rigidity of the entire institution, coupled to the very rigid 2 party system could never resist our contemporary troubled times.

schizodelusion.bsky.social•2 days ago

I would argue that the amendment system failed from the start, hence the civil war. We had to not let the confederate states participate in passing the reconstruction amendments, so here we are relitigating those amendments.

kaelik.bsky.social•2 days ago

It seems pretty clear that they did not anticipate an entire branch deferring to the president, but they also didn't anticipate political parties and it turned out, political parties led to congress abdicating way before the judiciary.

At the minimum the entire constitution has not functioned at

dappledlight.bsky.social•2 days ago

It was just a gentleman’s agreement that let it function at all. They also never anticipated that there would be career politicians they way we have. Which makes them beholden to donors.

kaelik.bsky.social•2 days ago

all in the post wwii era, with the FBI, arguably well before that.

If they couldn't anticipate that, it doesn't make it less of a failure.

thatdoll.online•2 days ago

the framers would shit their pants just seeing how the Commerce Clause panned out

nothing about the modem US would be recognizable to them

hyunjiinl.bsky.social•2 days ago

ummm the slave raping white dudes who threw a fit to avoid taxes? i'm sure they'd be fine w it if they were born today

slurpysoupy.bsky.social•2 days ago

I'm not one of those constitution obsessives who thinks its a flawless document or whatever- it's certainly deeply flawed, but I think in this case that's almost irrelevant. Any constitution will fail if the entire government collectively decides to ignore it.

popefrancis.bsky.social•2 days ago

I agree with you. No rule set matters if i isn't enforced and there is no one willing or powerful enough to do so. Lawlessness isnt the absence of laws, it's the absence of enforcement.

zoneleft.bsky.social•2 days ago

Regardless of how well thought out it is, there is always a person at the top of any government who needs to follow a law or be physically forced out by someone with a gun.

cmirar.bsky.social•2 days ago

📌

plunderdog903.bsky.social•2 days ago

When the constitution does fail then we as citizens are also no longer bound by it.

growseedsman.bsky.social•2 days ago

The failures of the Constitution are very different than the failures of the people to uphold its principles. That the Constitution is a working document is not in question, rather that our nation’s people are not abiding by the process nor are they/we creating improvements.

annlaabs.bsky.social•2 days ago

I thought nuetering the Constitution by bending it to one party's will would be more of a struggle.
#IOKIYAR Uber Alles, everyone!

mkwan.bsky.social•2 days ago

The weakness of the article is that this isn't just a collapse due to age or unknown forces. It's an intentional result of reactionary forces tearing out the underpinnings of the constitutional system. It's not like these weren't openly stated plans and design.