Explicit and Authentic Acts

In time for the 225th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, David Kyvig completed an Afterword to his landmark study of the process ofamending the US Constitution. The Afterword discusses the many amendments, such those requiring a balanced federal budget or limitingthe terms of members of Congress, that have been proposed since the book was originally published and why they failed of passage. Ata time when prominent scholars and other public figures have called for a constitutional convention to write a new constitution, arguingthat our current system of governance is unsustainable Kyvig reminds us of the high hurdles the founders created to amending the constitution and how they have served the country well, preventing the amendmentprocess from being used by one faction to serve the passions of the moment.