Guest Blogger: Marina M.

During the symposium on the Constitution today, an interesting thought entered my mind. Although we may have disagreed on a few points, we generally came to a consensus that alterations must be made in order for the Constitution to stay relevant and survive these changing times. For some reason (even though we are finished with the philosopher’s unit) this reminded me a lot of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Although he said “Yesterday’s law is not binding to-day”, I do not think he would agree with our decision to update our laws.
Rousseau talked a lot about the death of “the body politic”, saying that governments are basically born to die. A good constitution basically just prolongs this inevitable demise. “Let us not even dream of making it eternal.” He compared the legislative power as being the heart of the State, while the executive power as its brain. According to Rousseau, we can live with a weak executive power, but if the legislative power ceases than the State is dead. He emphasized that if the laws are upheld for a long time, they become rich with tradition, “while wherever the laws grow weak as they become old, this proves that there is no longer a legislative power, and that the State is dead”.
This doesn’t seem to make sense to us. If there is a law that cannot stand the test of time, why would we keep it? Instead of watching our State die, we as Americans see this flaw. That is why we are so obsessed with making changes. We refuse to believe that our government is anything but immortal. And why can’t it be? If we can find the happy medium between changing old laws but keeping fundamental ideals, who’s to say we won’t prosper forever?
That is why it is important to continue to update laws; even our forefathers could see this when they proposed the idea of Amendments in the first place.