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.