Amendments: Other

Laws must be public. It should never be the case that people are beholden to laws that they can not know. But there are secret courts. There are cases where the law itself has been treated as a copyrighted document. If law can not be known, it can not be followed.

1) All laws and court rulings, both federal and state, must be publicly accessible without cost or restriction

The Commerce Clause has been interpreted to mean many things that, on a plain English reading, it does not mean. Honestly, I'm not sure how much havoc would be wrought if we forced the federal government to regulate only interstate commerce, and leave intrastate commerce alone. I'd love to hear more discussion about that. So I'm going to throw this out there, without any comment about whether I personally support it or not.

2) The federal government shall have no authority to regulate private property that does not in any case change owners, cross state lines, or otherwise have effect outside the boundaries of a particular state.

In many places in the United States, people convicted of felonies are denied the right to vote, regardless of the extent of their felony. In some cases, this is perfectly reasonable. However, the breadth and length of this punishment can be excessive, especially in light of the huge fraction of our populace in prison.

3) No person shall be deprived of the right to vote for conviction of a crime, except for crimes of violence, treason, or electoral fraud. Removal of suffrage can only take place after all judicial appeals are exhausted. Suffrage must be immediately reinstated in the event the conviction is overturned.

It's been pointed out that I've failed to address some issues with the amendment process itself (going way back to my first suggested amendment). It's not really reasonable for an amendment to be allowed to stay in limbo indefinitely. Look at what happened with the 27th amendment. Many of the ratifications of that amendment took place over a century before its eventual passage. But it is not reasonable to assume that just because Tennessee (for example) of 2013 ratified something, that Tennessee of 2200 also approves of it. Or even, really, that Tennessee of 2015 approves of it.

4) Any state ratification of a proposed Constitutional amendment shall only be valid for twenty years.

5) A state has the right to rescind its ratification of a proposed Constitutional amendment, by means each state shall determine by law. This shall only apply to proposed amendments.

Amendments: Since 9/11

The Patriot Act has been criticized since its inception for granting the government overreaching powers in the name of protecting us. Under the act, the government can issue a National Security Letter demanding information on arbitrary people at arbitrary times, with little or no court oversight. These letters can come with gag orders, forbidding the recipient to talk about the fact that a search has taken place. Searches can be performed without the subject even knowing someone has been in his home! Some of these sections have already been held unconstitutional, but if they were law once, they can be law again. An amendment is called for to prevent such abuses.

1) Any planned or ongoing gathering of information relating to a criminal investigation, where such gathering would otherwise violate civil rights, shall be considered to be a search, and as such must be authorized by the courts before it can take place. The agency seeking such a warrant must clearly demonstrate to the court why such a warrant is necessary. The target of the information-gathering must be limited, and clearly specified in the warrant. The person who is the subject of the warrant must be promptly informed of the search.


The fourth amendment protects our right against unreasonable search. A federal court has defined warrantless searches as reasonable if:
"(1) a substantial government interest exists, (2) warrantless inspections are necessary to further the regulatory scheme, and (3) the statute authorizing the warrantless inspection serves as a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant."

This is not an unreasonable definition. However, from a procedural standpoint it is clearly insufficient. For ten years now the TSA has been making us less safe. They are extremely ineffective at finding actual threats, they become a threat by their invasive searches, and they cost us billions of dollars. Obviously the fourth amendment is insufficient to protect America from agencies like the TSA. We should require that any scheme for warrantless searches be approved by a court before implementation, and that such schemes be demonstrably effective.


2) In cases where unwarranted searches are reasonable and otherwise lawful, the means of such searches must be established as both necessary and effective in a court of law prior to such searches being performed. Cases may be brought before the court for the express purpose of establishing same for any proposed means of search.

The disposition and treatment of prisoners taken during the war on terror has been, quite simply, unamerican and evil. American agencies have kidnapped people outside our jurisdiction, or simply accepted the word of locals that some individual has done wrong. These agencies have handed prisoners to allies for torture, or tortured them directly. They've held prisoners without charge, and plan to do so indefinitely, in inhumane conditions. In many cases, we have no evidence that these people have participated in any wrongdoing. Worse, what evidence we have may not be admissible in court because it was obtained under torture.

We have to stop this. America must reclaim the moral high ground. There's no point in defending our way of life if we have to change our way of life to do it. Sometimes it's not enough to be protected. We need to live in a way that's worthy of protection. Sometimes being good means taking the risk of letting someone hurt you.

3) No person shall be held indefinitely without charge or trial, either within the United States or by any agency thereof. All persons held by the United States, regardless of geographic location, shall have swift access to the courts.


4) No agency of the United States shall release a prisoner of any sort into the custody of another country or non-state agency if there is reasonable expectation that the prisoner's human rights will be violated in the recipient's custody.

Amendments: Prisons

The US prison population is higher than any other country in the world. We, the land of the free, have more of our population in prison than China or Iran. Further, people leaving our prisons are often completely unable to reintegrate into society. This results in a huge and increasing portion of our population being unproductive and drains on our resources, to no good end.

So why do we have so many people in prison?

The first answer is obvious: the war on drugs, as presently implemented, is an utter failure. Punishing people with ever-longer prison sentences for relatively minor crimes makes everything worse. We have more people in jail, and the crime rate does not go down. We need to eliminate jail time for simple possession of drugs. This alone will reduce our prison population to something like half of what it presently is, without endangering the general populace.

1) Simple possession of controlled substances shall in no case be punished by incarceration, nor considered in determining the length of incarceration for other related crimes, unless such incarceration is primarily for the purpose of treatment. This applies retroactively to all persons presently so imprisoned.

Similar problems apply to other crimes. Mandatory minimum sentences do not lower crime rates. They are a political game our elected officials play so that they can appear tough on crime, to the detriment of us all.

2) Courts shall have full discretion over the sentencing of convicted criminals. All mandatory sentencing laws are void. Presently incarcerated convicts shall have the right to have the length of their sentences appealed if those sentences were set by mandatory minimum laws.

Those two things should greatly reduce the American prison population, without arbitrarily releasing violent criminals. But there are still other people in jail that shouldn't be: innocent people.

Consider the concept of a plea bargain. Say you're accused of a crime, a crime you did not commit. If the jury gets it wrong and you're found guilty, you may spend the rest of your life in jail. If, however, you plead guilty to a lesser crime, you "get to" spend only five years in jail. You are offered an incentive to lie and ruin your own life. Why? Well, so the government can save money! Forget justice, prosecuting all those cases in open court is expensive!

This is one of the worst ideas in the history of free countries. If our justice system isn't funded sufficiently to operate without blackmailing innocent people, our justice system isn't funded sufficiently. Plea bargains should never be allowed.

3) The state shall not offer persons accused of a crime any inducement to plead guilty, including the option of pleading to a lesser charge.

Finally, we have the concept of privately-run prisons. Practically, these simply don't work. There are some things you don't want run by the lowest bidder, and keeping dangerous people away from the rest of society is one of them. Beyond that, though, it's a very bad idea to create a section of society that benefits from there being more people in jail. That's a terrible incentive to add to any system.

4) The operation of prisons shall not be outsourced to any non-governmental agency.

Amendments: Copyright

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

As the constitution clearly states, the function of copyright is to incentivize the creation of new works. The purpose of copyright is not to help people or companies make money in itself; only to give them more reason to create additional new works. This is a good and valuable purpose.

I would argue that the present length of copyright is far past what actually incentivizes new work, and in fact disincentivizes it in many cases. Since much creative work is strongly based on older work, preventing works from entering public domain is damaging to the creative process. For a popular example, if Pride and Prejudice had never entered public domain, we would not now have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

(Reasonable people are welcome to disagree as to whether this would be a bad thing or not.)

Unfortunately, the Berne Convention makes any attempt to shorten copyright terms problematic. Naturally, a constitutional amendment can do whatever we want it to. I'm just pointing out that it's a broad issue. As such, I am not presently proposing an amendment relating to the length of copyright terms.

Regardless of copyright length, I most definitely hold that retroactive copyright extensions should never be allowed. If a work has been copyrighted for decades, and is about to enter public domain, it does not incentivize creation of new work for that copyright to be extended. Nor does it meet the clearly-stated criterion that copyrights be for limited times.

The present length of copyright terms extends well beyond the creator's lifetime, and probably the lifetime of all their children. The only purpose of retroactive extensions is to give money to people who never had anything to do with the creation of the copyrighted work. That is harmful to society in all cases, and is not a power government should have.

1) Copyrights exist for a fixed term, defined at issuance of that copyright. In no case shall a copyright term be retroactively lengthened.


I also hold that the penalties for copyright infringement are excessive and damaging to society. One can look at Capitol v. Thomas to see how extreme this gets. A woman illegally downloaded 24 songs for her personal consumption (not for profit, which is a whole different ballgame). She was fined nearly $10,000 per song! She would have been penalized far less for just shoplifting a CD, which would have done far more damage than downloading the songs. Punishment for breaking a just law is correct; beheading someone for jaywalking is not. This law is a total miscarriage of justice.

2) Statutory penalties for copyright infringement, where the party convicted of infringing did not profit, shall in no case exceed ten times the market value of the item infringed.

Another significant issue with copyright in the United States is orphan works. It is not necessary under current US law to register a work to have a copyright on it. But with no central registry, there's no guaranteed way to find the rights-holder if you want to license their work! This becomes even more complicated if the rights-holder was a company that no longer exists. There's no way for someone wanting to license an orphan work to do it legally. This discourages the creation of new work, which is the entire point of copyright.

So if we don't have a registry of copyrights, and we want a licensing process for orphan works, obviously some entity must stand for the interests of the absent rights-holder in negotiations. My suggestion would be for a court to determine the appropriate value of a license for the work, and for that court to hold any license fees paid. If the rights-holder becomes known, they get their money, and can renegotiate the license. If not, the work enters public domain.

3) In the event a copyright-holder can not be identified or located, a court shall set appropriate license fees, applicable for a fixed time. Should the rights-holder become known before that time, they shall receive all fees paid, and have all standard rights to re-negotiate the license at the end of the fixed term. If the rights-holder does not become known before the end of the license period, the work shall enter public domain.

Amendments: Civil Rights

The federal government has recently been invading the privacy of its citizens, with some of the most absurd arguments I've ever seen for why they can do this. They claim that e-mails stored on a server by Google don't belong to me any more. They claim that meta-data on my phone calls aren't private. Such positions are ridiculous on the face of them. It's apparent that our privacy extends only as far as we demand it to extend. We must make it clear that our information is ours, not subject to an overreaching government.

1) The right of individuals to be secure in their person, things, and effects, as well as the right of individuals to be secure against unwarranted search and seizure, shall extend to items and information held for that individual by a third party. These rights shall also extend to communication by that individual with whatever party, and information that such communication took place.

Prosecutors and judges have also tried to roll back our fifth amendment rights, punishing (presumed, remember, this is America) innocent people for refusing to decrypt their files. We have a right against self-incrimination, and we need to make it clear that it applies in all cases.

2) The right of a person to not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony shall include the right to refuse to assist the state in accessing private possessions or information.

Police of late have been in the habit of attaching GPS tracking units to cars without a warrant. As in, a police officer will walk into your driveway, attach a tracker to your car, and keep a record of your movements. Without a warrant! There is no difference between this and breaking into your house to perform a search without a warrant. A court recently ruled this unconstitutional, but courts sometimes change their minds. This practice needs to be ended permanently.

3) Any modification of a person's private possessions without warrant shall be interpreted as a violation of that person's right to security in said possessions, and shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

Some jurisdictions have tried to make it illegal to record the police. Such laws have been ruled unconstitutional, and rightly so. Still, I believe this should be expressly codified as a right in the Constitution, to ensure that such laws are not passed again.

4) All public actions taken by any law enforcement officer are subject to recording by the public. Such recordings shall be treated as the private property of the owner. Willful destruction of such records by anyone not their rightful owner shall be treated the same as destruction of any other private property.

The fact that this article exists at all is an embarrassment to our country. Torture should not be a subject of debate. It should be illegal, in all cases, by all persons, everywhere. Those who engage in it, authorize it, or allow it to occur under their watch, should be punished.

5) No person shall be tortured, either as punishment or to elicit testimony, or for any other reason. Torture or conspiracy to commit torture by any person in the United States, or in the service thereof, shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.


It is also an embarrassment that people are sent to prison for failure to pay a debt. Debtors' prison is one of the most absurd concepts ever to be imagined: you don't have money, so we're going to keep you from making any more money, and take over paying for your living expenses! (Sheer brilliance, I tell you!) It's immoral, and it's bad policy.

6) No person shall, in any case, be imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.

Amendments: Constitutionality

Courts sometimes rule that particular laws are unconstitutional. For that to happen in our present system, a case must be brought before the court. The person bringing the suit must have standing, or the case will be thrown out. So if an unconstitutional law is passed, it remains on the books until that law:

A) Harms or imminently threatens to harm someone
B) The harmed person files suit
C) The suit is completed

This process could take years, during which time the law is still being enforced on millions of people. Why should we have to live for years under an unconstitutional law, waiting for just the right court case to show up and wind its way through the system? If a law is unconstitutional, it should be possible for that to be determined before it is implemented!

1) The courts may rule on the constitutionality of bills before Congress prior to their adoption as law, or on any new bill passed into law.

Further, there are some cases where no one has standing. For example, cost-of-living adjustments to Congressional pay mid-term are a violation of the 27th amendment. (The DC circuit court disagrees, but... really? I'm not a lawyer, but... really?) The Tenth Circuit Court ruled that a Congressperson does not have standing to sue for this violation, presumably because they're not harmed by being given more money. But it's also precedent that taxpayers do not have standing to sue for unconstitutional use of tax money except in very narrow circumstances.

That leaves... nobody! No one has standing!

So if a law is clearly unconstitutional, but there is no clear harm to one specific individual, there is no way for this law to be challenged in court. This is simply an absurdity, a flaw in our system. If a law is unconstitutional, all citizens are harmed by its very existence, and thus should have standing to challenge it.

Obviously there's some potential for abuse here. When combined with my previously-proposed free court access, you'll see people challenging every single law on the books, constantly. There's the potential for a denial-of-service attack against the courts. There has to be some cost associated with challenging a law. I don't have a firm cost in mind, so I'll just throw something out there for discussion purposes.

2) A US citizen has the right to challenge the constitutionality of any law in court. Fees may be charged to file a constitutional challenge, but these fees shall not exceed the median weekly wage of the United States.

Amendments: Election Reform

I like to start these articles by identifying problems, but when it comes to elections, it's such a list!

• Congress with single-digit approval ratings and 90%+ re-election rates
• Entrenched political class
• No response to the desires of the people as a whole
• Winner-take-all electoral vote distribution
• Disenfranchises the minority in the state, who have no effect on the election outcome
• Heavily-gerrymandered single-winner congressional districts
• Again, disenfranchises the minority, who get no representation
• Since the minority party has no effect, candidates pander to the extreme of the majority party
• High barriers to ballot access
•  Locked-in two-party system with no chance of competition (and thus improvement!)
• Ballot design gives advantages to some candidates
• Order has an effect on odds of winning
• Party recognition on ballot further entrenches party-based politics
• No paper trail
• Reduces voter confidence in the system
• Can't effectively recount votes
• Dominance of money in elections
• Distorts system; some people have more influence than others

 Let's address the ballot issues first, as they're relatively straightforward.

1) All votes cast in elections for offices federal, state, or local, shall be recorded in a written, durable form readable by a healthy human without mechanical assistance. This record shall be presented to the voter for verification before the vote is cast, whereupon that voter shall have the option to recast their vote. The federal government shall define standards for this process, and fund the acquisition of necessary equipment.

2) Ballots shall not indicate the party affiliation of any candidate.

3) In the event that voters are presented with a ballot listing the names of candidates, the order of those names shall be randomized on each ballot.

4) In no case shall the signatures of more than 100 registered voters be required for a candidate to be listed on the ballot for any election, nor shall fees be charged for such listing.

I believe the emphasis on how Presidential elections operate is unfortunate, as there are tens of thousands of other elections in this country every year, all of which have very similar problems. However, any list of proposed amendments for the people to consider would be incomplete without one eliminating the electoral college.

5a) The President shall be elected by popular vote. The electoral college is nullified.

If not that, I'd suggest an alternative:

5b) The electoral votes of each state shall be distributed proportionally to each candidate according to the popular vote within that state.

Nor would the list be complete without mention of term limits. Incumbents clearly have tremendous advantage when seeking reelection, meaning the election is not a level playing field. However, we also are not well-served to throw out years of governing experience without hope of recovery. There are a few possible approaches to this, which I list in order of my increasing preference:

6a) No person shall hold the office of Senator more than twice, or of Representative more than six times.

6b) States shall have the right to set term limits for their Representatives or Senators.

6c) No person shall hold the office of Senator, Representative, or President twice in succession, but may otherwise serve as many times as elected.

Now, the fun ones! 

Gerrymandering is essentially a problem of incentives. There is an inherent conflict of interest, with power on one hand, and fairness of elections on the other. Power always wins. This leads to single-party districts, causing candidates in those districts to pander to the extreme wing of the majority party, effectively disenfranchising the minority party.

If you let politicians redraw their own districts, then obviously they'll use that power to benefit themselves. The only solution is to take that power away.

7) All electoral districts shall be drawn by a politically-neutral group of at least five people, none of whom are elected officials. This body shall be politically neutral. The states shall have the power to define the selection process for this group.

Personally, I'm a big fan of multi-member districts and proportional representation, which could eliminate gerrymandering concerns entirely. I would hold that use of such is something that's best decided on a state level. However, states presently do not have that option. Federal law prevents states from having multi-member districts.

8) States shall have the right to determine whether to use single-member or multi-member House districts, so long as each voter's weight is approximately equal.

I also hold that states should have more control over their legislators.

9) States shall have the right to hold recall elections for their Representatives or Senators, and to determine processes to fill vacancies between elections.

The influence of money over our elections is undeniable, and undeniably undemocratic. The very idea that one person or group should be able to influence the outcome of an election more than another, simply because one of them has more money than the other, is an indisputable distortion of how any democracy should work. And with the Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court has gutted what few restrictions there were on the problem. Either Congress should have the power to regulate campaign contributions, or election campaigns should be publicly funded. See Move to Amend for more.

10a) Congress shall have the power to regulate donations and spending on federal election campaigns. The states shall have such power over election campaigns for all other offices.

10b) All elections shall be publicly funded; spending private money on an election, unless that money is equally shared among all candidates for that office, shall be forbidden by law.

Finally, and most fundamentally, the entire concept of plurality voting is flawed. If there are more than two candidates, you get vote-splitting, which throws the election to an unpopular candidate. That's ultimately why we have a two-party system, and why we have primaries and runoffs. There is no law that says plurality voting must be used. Nobody ever chose it as the best voting system; we simply use it because we always have. Switching to approval voting would be cheaper, simpler, more democratic, and give vastly better results in every measurable way.

(While there are other voting systems to choose from, the only one that could be argued to be better than approval voting is range voting, and it's far more complicated and expensive to implement. IRV is more commonly suggested, but harder to implement, more complex to execute, and technically inferior on a number of counts. IRV isn't even monotone!)

11) All public elections at any level of government shall be held using approval voting.

Amendments: Self-Defense Rights

Self defense is also a fundamental right, even more so than property rights. What weapons one may have to assist in that defense is a subject of much debate, and many contradictory court rulings. Much of this argument is about the exact wording of the constitution. I suggest that instead of arguing about what the constitution means now, we instead determine what it would be best for it to say. So put the second amendment aside, and start from first principles.

Much of the function of government is to handle situations where two individuals' interests conflict. Let's make up an extreme situation: say I have an interest in having a weapon that would let me blow up the sun with no effort. (I don't, just for the record.) But my neighbor also has an interest in me not having such a weapon, because it makes me a threat to him. Our interests are in conflict, so government balancing those interests is appropriate. And given that one person having that much power totally destabilizes the entirety of civilization, I'd say they'd be right to come down against my interests entirely. So we can conclude that it is right for us to allow government to keep people from having weapons of infinite power.

On the other hand, I have fists. (On both hands, if I'm so inclined.) My neighbor would be safer if I didn't. But obviously you can't go around cutting everyone's hands off, because (shockingly) that actually makes everyone less safe. So it is not correct for us to allow government to regulate all possible weapons.

Somewhere between fists and nova bombs is a balance point. So how do we identify that point? At what point does a weapon's nature as a threat to my neighbor (all three hundred million of them) outweigh its value to me for self defense, or for whatever other purpose I may have in mind?

I would say we can divide weapons into three classes. Please note that I am proposing this scheme as a suggestion, and not saying that I definitely believe that each weapon I list in a class must belong there. I'm trying to start a conversation, not hand down wisdom from on high!

A) Trivial weapons. These are weapons that the government can not and should not try to regulate, if only because the side-effects of trying would be absurd. Things like fists, rocks, sticks, most knives, maybe  swords, possibly some guns.
B) Peaceful-use weapons. These are weapons that can be used to kill in small numbers, but have other legitimate uses, like hunting, sport, or self-defense. They may be regulated in some way, but should not be outlawed or made overly onerous to own. Things like shotguns, hunting rifles, swords, possibly small explosives.
C) Killing weapons. These are weapons which can kill large numbers of people easily, and have very limited application otherwise. As we do not live in a society where one's ability to kill large numbers of people quickly is of any significant benefit to law-abiding citizens, these weapons definitely should be regulated, and possibly outlawed entirely. These include automatic rifles, high-capacity magazines, and large explosives.

If we accept this scheme, the next step is to define which weapons fit into what class, and then to decide if and how to regulate those for which it is appropriate. However, those matters are entirely variable with time. As such, they are not appropriate material for an amendment to the constitution. We should set up the framework, at let the details of the law vary by time and location.

1) Weapons which convey the ability to kill large numbers of people rapidly are subject to regulation or ban by federal or state governments.

2) Weapons which are useful for purposes including (but not limited to) sport and self-defense, but are not useful for killing large numbers of people quickly, are subject to regulation by state and federal governments. However, their ownership shall not be barred to any adult person except for conviction of a felony or declaration of mental incompetence by a court of law. Regulation may include limits on the manner and locations allowable for carrying and storing such weapons, so long as such regulations do not interfere with the right of ownership and legitimate use.

Admittedly, this leaves the possibility for laws to be passed which limit weapons beyond the intent of this text. "Large" and "quickly" are vague. Those laws would then have to be challenged in court, as is often the case. In this case perhaps that is best. However, I am always open to better wording.

On the subject of self defense, when is one allowed to exercise force against another person? One reasonable standard is set by if you have a legitimate fear for your safety. If someone breaks down your door, you can be reasonably confident you are in danger and should defend yourself.

Except not so much.

No knock warrants are simple: they put civilians in danger, they put police in danger, and they diminish public trust in the police an the justice system. All that, for the ability to catch an occasional drug dealer in the act. This is not an acceptable tradeoff!

3) When executing warrants, arrests, or otherwise issuing legally binding instructions, law enforcement officers shall in all cases clearly identify themselves, their intent, and their duties, before execution of same.