Ranking the Amendments
The
Constitution and the 27 Amendments lay out, sometimes in very fine detail, how
our government works and the specific rights and protections we have from the
government. In fact, the 1st Amendment alone has between 6 and 8 rights packed
in one long sentence, depending on how you read it.
The
Constitution was meant to be hard to amend, and that is a good thing. For
instance, prohibition of alcohol was a popular political movement for about 30
years, so the 18th Amendment was passed to settle the issue. Passing an
amendment for even a popular movement turned out to be a really bad idea, so we
had to pass the 21st Amendment to fix it. Oops. You can probably think of other
things you see constantly in the news we argue about, and it might seem like a
good idea to just end the debate with an amendment, but we should bear these
past mistakes in mind.
Your
job in this paper:
1.
Rank the top three rights found in the Amendments to the Constitution. I want
you to dive deep – you can’t just say the 1st or 15th Amendment, I want you to
spell out a specific right in the Amendment and discuss why it is there and
what it means.
2.
Explain your reasoning for each right you chose and why you ranked them over
the others – points will be determined by originality and depth of the
explanation.
3.
If you could pop back in time to 1791, what is one Amendment (an enumerated
right or protection) you would have tried to get the founders to add?
4.
Get back into the time machine to 1787 – what would you warn the founders they
needed to change in the actual Constitution? Bear in mind your audience of
founders, do you think they would listen after the war they just fought?
For
#4, I am excluding a couple of things that are too obvious or too modern:
Slavery, guns, healthcare, student loans. Find something else the Founders
would have no idea might break.
The rules: Remember, this needs to be at least three pages of solid,
thoughtful material to even be considered for full credit. Students
receiving full credit usually turn in papers more than the minimum. Have
some fun with it, but remember this is an academic paper. use proper grammar and proof-read before sending, use the spell-checker,
do not end a sentence with a question mark (you are supposed to answer
questions, not ask them), et cetera.
Do
not put a heading at the top of your paper, as it does not count towards your
page minimum.
If
you are citing to an article or website then you need to use citations.
However, don’t bog down your essay with a bunch of statistics. I
encourage research on what each amendment does, but I don’t want a list copied
from a website. This needs to be your logic and writing.
