Changing the Constitution: Wishful Thinking or Potential Nightmare?
March 11, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: Greg Schaller
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 3/11/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, good afternoon and welcome to another Stand in the Gap. Today I am your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastor’s Network. Well, it’s only occurred 27 times in nearly 250 years. It’s a rare event in our nation’s history, and I believe the founders designed it that way. The last time it happened was in 1992 and it took 202 years to make that happen. The wheels of government turned slowly. What I’m talking about is constitutional changes or as we would know them, amendments. The United States Constitution was written as former Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the early 18 hundreds to endure for ages to come and to ensure that would last and the framers made the amending the document a difficult task. That difficulty was obvious recently when supporters of congressional term limits and a balanced budget amendment were not successful in getting new amendments they wanted.
Yet there has been much talk about making changes to our guiding documents and depending on what side of the aisle you sit on or who is in power at the time, what you want to change and why you want to do it could be good, could be bad, or as we will discuss today, it could be really bad. Our program is entitled Changing the Constitution, wishful Thinking or a Potential Nightmare, and To Help us is a returning guest to Stand in the Gap. And that’s Dr. Greg Shaller. He’s the director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. He comes with a wealth of historical wisdom and also keen insight on what’s happening in our present political landscape, but even more helpful how as believers were to view these issues and properly respond. Greg, thank you for joining me today. I’m especially excited because this is not a subject that many Americans fully understand. Welcome.
Greg Schaller:
Thank you, Jamie. It’s great to be back with you. I believe the last time I was on was before the November elections and we were talking about Christian’s responsibilities to participate and voting and how we should think about our vote. It’s certainly been an interesting election season and then in the first few days of the Trump administration, so we are indeed living in interesting times and I think this subject matter of constitutional amendments fits in with that quite well in sort of framing how we think about those things within our constitution.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, I think it would be helpful to discuss what an amendment is and why we would need it and what should be the reason for it. Give us a little historical perspective.
Greg Schaller:
Right, so the founders were aware that they didn’t create a perfect document and they knew that there would be developments over time that might require changes to our constitution. So the original Constitution, which was ratified in 1787, contains components, a process, a method of making those changes to our constitution. And there they’re largely spelled out in Article five of the Constitution, so our founders were aware that they didn’t have a perfect document. It was likely going to need at certain times, adjustments, additions, and so they provided a process for doing that. They didn’t want it to be a simple thing. I think the way you framed this in the introduction is correct. A durable constitution is one that there’s familiarity with. There’s not frequent changes to it otherwise it would be difficult to operate a system of government if there was frequent changes to it. So recognizing a need for the possibility for change yet not making that an easy process was very much how the framers were thinking about this process.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, as I mentioned my opening, we’ve only had 27 amendments over the years, the initial ones, I think the initial 10 happened fairly quickly, but the founders intended this thing to be hard. They didn’t want it to be done quickly. As you’ve mentioned, we hear this term, it’s a living document and need to change with the culture. That was not the intent from the beginning.
Greg Schaller:
That’s correct. One thing and that need for constant change and to go with whatever the current mind of the American people is, was something that our founders wanted to avoid. They had a fear about the temporary passions of the people being something that could be quite dangerous to our republic, and so they didn’t want a constitution that would change with every whim. A way to think about this and to think about the progressive push and how that has impacted not our national constitution so much, but certainly our state constitutions. I’ve moved from Pennsylvania to Colorado recently, and Colorado has a fairly easy process for changing its constitution, and I think that’s very problematic. It simply requires a majority of the citizens to vote in favor of a change to the Constitution, and that changes the Constitution. Our founders would’ve just thought that was a terrible, terrible idea because the temporary mind of the people is often very much about passion and interest and they recognize the need for change in the Constitution, but they wanted it to be a very slow and deliberative process, one that would take time and that people would’ve to think about and you would have a super majority of the states being in favor of it before there would be any alteration to our constitution.
So yes, again, going back to this idea, there’s going to be times when it’s necessary, but it shouldn’t be a simple process for making those changes because the founder’s fear, it’s almost like a mob rule mentality, the temporary will of the people and they didn’t want that mob rule mentality to be something that could alter this permanent document.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, Greg, just apply this even like today when we talk about when selecting Supreme Court justices, we say we like people who are constitutionalists and not revisionists or people who see this as a living document at the crux of it. That’s what we fear most is people making their own applications to the constitution.
Greg Schaller:
Yeah, I think that’s right. Madison, in this famous Federalist paper number 10 talks about this factious temperament that often comes about and it usually is a temporary will and the Constitution is actually designed to prevent that temporary will from prevailing. At times we get frustrated really depending on which side of the aisle you are on, maybe whether your side wins or loses an election, wherever it may be. That temporary frustration leads to us wanting to make alterations to the Constitution often so that we can get what we want, get the results we want. But again, our founders created a document with process, with slow deliberative process. All of this is about blocking that temporary will. So I know people get passions get inflamed at times when they’re frustrated, when they don’t like certain things that a government is doing, but just when you don’t like the outcomes doesn’t mean that you should change the process.
Jamie Mitchell:
Yes. Hey friends, I don’t want you to miss the rest of this program. There is much to talk about when it comes to constitutional changes and we need to know what is meant and why it should happen. So when we return, we’re going to talk about the actual process to change our guiding documents and we’re going to talk about some pitfalls and problems. And if we are to make some changes, what are some good changes? Well, welcome back. My guest today is Dr. Greg Schaller and we are digging into the subject of Constitutional Amendments and what is behind the changes. Greg, I want you to walk us through the process of proposing an amendment and what is needed for that amendment to then be passed and become part of our constitution. My guess is a lot of our listeners are unaware and they really need to know, especially as we flippantly talk about changing the Constitution. It’s not as easy as we think it is.
Greg Schaller:
Correct? Yeah. So our constitution has been amended 27 times since the founding. But thinking about that and thinking about the process of how this came about, there’s two methods that are spelled out in the Constitution. Again, this is all in Article five of the Constitution ratified in 1787. So there’s a congressional proposal and then a convention method. All 27 of the amendments that we’ve had added to our constitution have been done by the congressional proposal method. None have been done by convention yet. There is active talk about the call for, you may have heard it as an Article five convention or a convention of the states. So the two processes, the congressional proposal, which again is the way that all 27 amendments have been passed, it requires two thirds approval in both the House and the Senate. So an amendment is proposed, it passes both the House and the Senate, not by a simple majority, but by two thirds of the members.
And then it goes to the states and they have to have ratifying conventions and three quarters. So that’s 38 of our 50 states have to do this in order for it to become a part of the constitution. The convention method is different. Again, this has never actually been done, but there are people talking about this right now. It requires two thirds, so that’s 34 of the state legislatures to call for a constitutional convention. And there’s some debate as to whether they can just call for a convention and then delegates are sent from the states and they can discuss all different sorts of amendments. Or if these two thirds of the states have to send a particular mandate, we are calling a convention of states for the purpose of a balanced budget amendment or some other issue that might come up. So there’s some question about that, and since we don’t have a lot of experience with this, there is a bit of confusion about this.
So if there is a convention called all the states would send delegates to this, they would then possibly pass an amendment. It then still has to go back to the states and three quarters of the states. So again, 38 states would have to approve this in order for it to become a part of the Constitution. So this need for a super majority on either method is very important because it ensures broad national support for anything, any changes that might take place to our constitution. So when thinking about the history of this, the 27 Amendments, the first 10 amendments actually happened in the first four years of our nation’s history. If you’ve ever studied the ratification process of the Constitution, you know that the delegates met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, and then they send the Constitution to the states who had to ratify it in order for it to become the law, the governing law of our land.
During that summer of debates, there was the groups that we today refer to as the Federalists, those in favor of Constitution of 1787 and the anti-Federalists, those who had some opposition to it, one of the key sticking points between them was actually the inclusion or not of a Bill of Rights, something everyone is probably familiar with. Those are the first 10 amendments actually to our constitution. These are the things that spell out our right of freedom of speech, our freedom of religion or freedom of the press, our protections against criminal due process. So right concerning search and seizure rules, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. Those first 10 things, that’s a big part of the compromise of ratification was that once the new government was formed, that the Congress would take up an inclusion of this Bill of Rights, these protections for the citizens against the government.
So when you’re thinking about this, the first 10 amendments take place in the first four years, and then following that is when we get the additional 17 amendments that we have had. And of those three also were very much about a particular issue, the Civil War reconstruction. So those are the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, 13th amendment ending slavery, making it illegal under our government, the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection of the law and the 15th Amendment concerning the voting rights for those former slaves, people of African descent in order there’s protection. So those three were very much again about a particular issue and particular context in our nation’s history in dealing with that. So if you remove that 10 and those three, then we’re just left with another 11 for all the other changes that have taken place to our constitution additions.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, as I’m listening to you, my mind goes to how in the world could we ever do the second way of changing the constitution that the convention of states, the level of coordination, the level of cooperation, even governors and the different houses and different state senates, being able to talk to each other to say, Hey, we need to do this, and then to galvanize around a certain issue or problem. It almost seems impossible, but if it did happen, it certainly would be a mandate, wouldn’t it?
Greg Schaller:
Indeed, it would. And I think certainly who’s motivated and what are the motivations if nothing else? I have a good friend, his named Rob Nason. He’s a constitutional law expert and he’s written extensively on conventions of the states. If nothing else, it would sort of be a civics lesson for our country to think about this process, think about changing alterations to our constitution. There’s some concern that some people have, they call it a runaway convention. If we send these delegates to this, they could end up doing anything. I guess that’s possible, but keep in mind it still has to go back to the states for it to become a permanent part of our constitution, and that requires, again, three quarters, 38 of the 50 states. So I’m not so concerned about a runaway convention. Maybe they would pass something at this convention, which I would think would be problematic, but it still is going to have to get super majority of support, and that really does signify a broad national support for any changes we might have. It is difficult. I think you’re right, and that’s probably one of the main reasons why we’ve actually never done that in our nation’s history. But I’m not opposed to it because again, I think there are significant and sufficient checks on this process. So I’m not worried about a runaway convention so much, but you’re right, it would require an awful lot of coordination on the parts of a lot of people to call for this ratifying a convention of states and then getting the people there and with the capacity and the mandate for making a change.
Our Congress is not so much motivated oftentimes for making changes to the Constitution, and I think our founders recognize that and that’s why they did provide the second method for making a change. What if there is something that the people really want that’s not in the self-interest of members of Congress, they’re not going to push a constitutional amendment if they don’t think it’s consistent with their self-interest. And I think we know that there are times when the self-interest of elected officials may be contra to the self-interest, the good of the general public. So I think again, I think our founders were well aware of that and that’s why they included this second method of making changes.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, I mentioned in my opening that the last amendment took place in 1992. It was regarding the pay increase of Congress. It was originally opposed in 1789. The amendment right before that was about 18 year olds voting. It was the shortest. It only took a hundred days. Why the disparity of time lapsed and why so long for the 27th amendment
Greg Schaller:
Right. Well, and we can also maybe think a little bit about the equal Rights amendment and why that had such a relatively short time period in which it had to be ratified and ultimately it was not. When the amendment was proposed and passed, it did not any sort of time limit on when the states had to ratify it. And that’s why that process took so long in thinking about that there was not a dramatic push on the part of the American people and getting to the self-interest of members of Congress. It actually was contrary to their self-interest dealing with their pay raises, their increases in salary. So they were not going to be out there strongly advocating for this because it was under CO to their immediate self-interest. So it sort of lingered out there. And finally, when there’s sort of sufficient frustration on the part of enough states, it finally does become a part of our constitution.
The immediacy of the other amendment of lowering the voting age to 18 is very much contextually driven, right? It’s in the context of the Vietnam War when we have soldiers at the age of 18 fighting for this nation who don’t have the ability to actually vote for its elected leaders, you can sort see how that momentum would build those pressures would build within the general public to sort of looking at that and thinking that’s not right that they can fight for the nation, but they can’t vote for the nation. So that was a much more popular driven amendment to our constitution.
Jamie Mitchell:
Wow. Well, only 33 changes have ever been proposed and 27 of them got ratified. So it is not like a lot of changes as it seems that there are plenty of safeguards when we return with all the talk of change. We want to look at some of the changes being discussed and the potential problems with making changes to our guiding documents. This is going to be a fascinating conversation, so don’t miss it. Stay with us here at Stand In the Gap. Well, thank you for staying with us. I believe today’s content will be profitable to you, especially if you have kids who are learning about our government. This will be helpful speaking about learning and teaching the next generation, Greg, that is what you’ve been involved with. Could you take a moment and tell our audience about the Centennial Institute and what exactly you’re doing?
Greg Schaller:
Thanks. The last time we talked, I was running the John Jay Institute back in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, which is a post-baccalaureate fellowship. But I was asked if I would come back to Colorado where I taught from 2009 to 2017 at Colorado Christian University, but not to come back as a professor, but to come back as the director of Centennial Institute. So Centennial Institute is a public policy and academic center on the campus of Colorado Christian University. So we do public policy research from a faith-based perspective, but we also do all sorts of academic programming for our students. So developing courses related to C’S mission, and again from a biblical worldview and other engagements with students, all sorts of programming. I took 42 students to Washington for the March for Life back in January, and we’re going to be participating in the Colorado March for Life in April. We just hosted a week last week actually called CCU for Israel, and we hosted Joel Rosenberg on campus for a lecture. We also had Matthew Levitt who’s a terrorism expert dealing with the threats that Israel faces. So we do all sorts of programming throughout the academic year on a wide range of subjects, all from a faith-based biblical worldview and how we can engage our culture with grace and truth.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well that is fantastic, and I want to encourage you to check out Colorado Christian University. Go to their website and you’ll learn more about that great institution. So good to have a solid Christian colleges and universities that are committed to a biblical worldview. Greg, talking about changes to our constitution. Here are some proposals that I’m hearing floating around maybe better said, even threatened greater clarity on church and state and how the church and the state are to interact a myriad of immigration laws and pathways to citizenship abolishing the electoral college English as the official language criminalizing flag burning and making prayer in school. Both abolished and I’ve heard allowed now weigh in on some of these. Are they legitimate changes? Are they going to get us into bigger trouble? How should we view some of these things?
Greg Schaller:
Yeah, so I guess one thing I’d ask us to step back, take the view from 30,000 feet. What is the purpose of a constitution as opposed to its positive laws? It’s laws that operate our day-to-day lives when we’re thinking about the constitution, these are to be the more permanent things and not sort of what we are operating on for day-to-day lawmaking. And I think a lot of people think, well, the only way to fix this is to go with the constitutional amendment. There’s other ways to do this. It’s going to be less permanent, but there’s a reason for that. A constitution can’t deal with every particular issue. That’s why we have a Congress that makes laws. We have presidents that then enforce those laws. So I think whenever we’re frustrated and our immediate response is let to fix the Constitution, I think we ought to be slow about that.
It’s not meant to be something we turn to frequently. Another thing to keep in mind again and then we’ll get into the specifics of some of the examples that you just raised is all of this is going to be left up to constitutional interpretation. So one of the things you mentioned is allowing prayer, not allowing prayer. We had school prayer for many years and it wasn’t until our Supreme Court entered into this fray and ruled that as unconstitutional something I don’t think they should have done. Yes, we are frustrated by that. Many Christians are don’t see anything in the Constitution that explicitly prohibits this. And if it’s not explicitly prohibited, my view is ought to be left to the people to decide. And if a school district wants to have prayer in school, I see no prohibition preventing them in our constitution from doing that.
So I guess the point I’m trying to make is that all of this is going to be dependent upon interpretation of the Constitution, largely by our supreme court and our supreme court. Even if it says something in the Constitution, something that we’ve interpreted in a way for much of our nation’s history, there really isn’t much preventing them from a misinterpretation, a misapplication of that. So just keep in mind that there’s sort of that tension that exists there now to some of the specifics that you had mentioned. Some of these I think are quite concerning to me. Abolishing the electoral college, our founders had what I believe is a very solid reason for not having just a popular vote in choosing our presidents that it’s required to have widespread broad support among many states in order for a person to become elected president. So I’m quite concerned about this because I know following the 2000 election when Al Gore wins a popular vote and George W. Bush wins the electoral college, so happens again in 2016 when Donald Trump wins the electoral college, but not the popular vote.
There were these calls, well, we have to eliminate the electoral college. I say no. There was a reason why the founders didn’t just want it to be a popular vote, a popular majority. It was because if it was simply that popular vote, the interests of many of our states would largely be ignored. It was just a popular vote. We’d have candidates just campaigning exclusively in the most populous areas and largely ignoring the more rural parts of our nation. And our towns didn’t want that. They wanted presidential candidates to have to appeal to widespread of our population. So thinking about that, what was the motivation for that? The motivation for calls for eliminating electoral college is out of immediate frustration of electoral loss. That’s not when we change our constitution. It shouldn’t be what’s motivating us when we’re frustrated because my preferred candidate may not have won an election.
That’s where we need to change the process for choosing our presidents. No, actually when we don’t want to change our constitution, some of these other things, I mean they’re kind of interesting and maybe, but I think ultimately things like immigration policy, our lawmakers ought to do this. I don’t think we should. I mean, what would an amendment look like concerning immigration policy? We know that making something permanent is not going to apply well given different circumstances. We’ve had different eras in our nation’s history concerning immigration policy largely because of need. When we’ve needed an increase in people coming to our country, we’ve encouraged that if we had a constitutional amendment, it might prohibit us from bringing new people to this country in seasons when it might be good for our nation’s history. So I guess turning to constitutional amendment to realize immediate want from the population is not the method that our founders thought most effective.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, I’m really interested to tap your mind on this, and that is as we look at the 27 amendments that we have ratified, from your perspective, are there any problematic amendments that occurred? I mean, you just said you kind of warned us, be very careful. Has any slipped through that as you look at it now, say, yeah, that probably was not a good amendment to ratify.
Greg Schaller:
Right. There’s two in particular, which I find to be very problematic, and the reason I find them problematic is not so much, but in my mind, it actually alters the operation of our constitution as our founders had intended it, and that would be the 16th and the 17th amendments. The 16th amendment has to do with income taxes, and the 17th amendment has to do with the election process, the means of electing our United States senators. So if we think about that first, the mindset of the founders concerning the Senate was that these were to be representatives of the interests of the states. So I’m not sure if all of the listeners are aware of this, but for much of our nation’s history, senators were not elected by direct election, but they were actually selected by the state legislatures. So the state legislator, when you think about the state of Pennsylvania, the elected house and Senate members would meet and they would choose somebody to be the senator from the state of Pennsylvania.
That’s the way it was with all of the states until ratification of the 17th Amendment. So what was the mind of the United States Senator? To represent the best interests of the state government to our national government. That’s a very different motivation than a person who is popularly elected by the citizens of the state. The state legislature better. The average citizen knows what’s in the best interest of the state, and they choose somebody to represent those interests with the ratification, with the Amendment of 17th Amendment, the passage of the 17th Amendment, the Senate loses its character and it becomes very much like the House of Representatives, simply a vote for the popular wants of the people of the state of Pennsylvania. Our founders believes, and I believe this is still true today, is that people in a particular state may not know what’s in the best interests of the state of Pennsylvania or the state of Colorado or any of the states. The state legislature knows those best. Here’s the most explicit way that this has proven that they don’t necessarily know much of the major increase in social policy that has taken place in our nation’s history at the expense of the
Speaker 3:
Interest of the States has largely been because of the passage of the 17th Amendment. We would not have the welfare programs that we have today because it’s hurting the states. It’s not in the best interest of the states
Jamie Mitchell:
Making changes to the Constitution. It does have consequences. Hopefully it’ll have a good outcome, but potentially there’s problems that we need to fix when we conclude. We want to look at the possibility of some good changes. Stay with us here at Stand of the Gap. Well, this has been a wonderful hour of learning and most importantly, looking at the whole issue of constitutional changes with Dr. Greg Shaller. We’ve discussed the history of amendments, how the process actually takes place. Some of the pitfalls, Greg, we need to bring this into a landing, but I do want to just go back to the last session and mention you were talking about the 16th and 17th Amendment as being from your perspective, problematic one being that senators are no longer placed or put into the Senate by their state legislature. As I was thinking, that really took away a lot of the power and purpose of the state legislatures. And then combined with that, just around the same time, was the amendment saying that now the federal government could take taxes from us, so more power being given to Washington and less power to the States. Am I right in seeing those two amendments in that way?
Greg Schaller:
Absolutely. You framed that perfectly, I think, and that is my great concern in thinking about the structure of our national government. What was the founder’s intent? If you go to Article one, section eight, it spells out the enumerated powers, the types of laws that Congress can pass. And the assumption was that if it’s not enumerated, Congress can’t touch it. Well, that’s another significant change. But you can see how both the 16th and 17th amendment and our willingness to interpret things like the commerce clause or the general welfare clause, our national governments has enabled our Congress to pass laws interfering in areas that were meant intended to be the domain of state governments. So these amendments 16th 17, and as you point out the 16th Amendment, the taxation power on earned income has enabled this huge expansion of the national government that our founders had never intended.
And not only we thinking about this, I was actually sitting in on a lecture recently of a friend and he was talking about the income tax. The first couple of years, the highest income tax rate was about 7%. And we think about it today and it’s 40, and we think about throughout our nation’s history since the passage of the, there were seasons when the highest income tax rate was at 70, 80, 90% of earned income. It’s extraordinary abuse, I think, of rightful government power. So it is altered. All of these combined have significantly altered how our founders viewed and intended for our government to work, as you described it, stripping power that is rightly in the hands of state governments away from them and to the national government. And so these amendments have altered the intent of our government and how our founders envisioned it working. And that’s why I find them to be very, very problematic.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, as we do bring a close to this today, I want to get your perspective. Are there one or two amendments that you think might be helpful at this point in our history?
Greg Schaller:
Yeah, there are two that I can think of. And I would say I’ve had sort of an evolution in my own thinking on these. The first would be term limits. Madison, they actually debated term limits for members of Congress at the constitutional convention in 1787. And Madison made the case that a term limit is an artificial impediment to a person running for Congress or being selected as a senator. And he had a trust in the wisdom of the people to choose their elected representatives from their state. So he said a term limit is an artificial impediment. I believe that as our nation has changed, progressed, evolved, that the ability for incumbents to use their office to ensure their reelection and to create impediments towards challengers. I’ve changed my thinking on this. I think Madison May have been right for his time, but I am now a strong proponent of term limits.
I think it’s very, very difficult to get rid of, to challenge effectively most of our members of Congress. And thinking about the two means of, again, we talked about at the beginning of amending our constitution, is it likely for a term limits on members of Congress to be initiated by the Congress? And I think the answer to that is probably no. So this may be a time when we would need a convention of states to push an amendment like this of setting term limits on members of the House and the Senate. And the other one that I again has sort of evolved in my thinking a little bit is on a balanced budget amendment. And again, this probably goes against the self-interest or the immediate wants of our elected members of the House and the Senate and might require a convention of the states, but our spending is just out of control. When you look at what our deficit spending has been and what our national debts are, they’re just extraordinary. And it’s difficult to imagine a means of us getting out of that debt absent something like a balanced budget, an amendment. Again, I think it’s unlikely that Congress would pass this. So it might require a convention of states in order to do this, our government is spending in an untenable way and unless something dramatic curtails that I think it means long-term suffering for the American economy,
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, I can imagine them doing a convention of states to deal with these two issues and the back room sabotage, the conspiracy theories that will run wild because everybody and their brother is going to stop these two things from going forward. But I am in full agreement with you. They are, I think, necessary to put some guardrails on our nation right now. We didn’t really get a full chance to discuss the Supreme Court’s role in our constitution, but the highest court of our land does interpret it. Is there safe to say that their judgment plays a role on whether we need constitutional amendments or not? I mean, they make decisions in some respects. They’re almost like amendments being made.
Greg Schaller:
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, something we talked about in the previous segment, something where I believe they’ve gotten things wrong is school prayer, a violation of constitutional establishment clause for the majority of our nation’s history. No one made such a claim that beginning the school day in a public school somehow violated the establishment clause by having prayer. And they first in Everson in 1947, then later cases in the 1960s all of a sudden interpret it differently. Our founders advocated for prayer in schools, how could they, someone went today than in say that? No, that’s in violation of the Constitution. Clearly it is not. So you’re quite right. Constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court is something that can be manipulated, it can be done poorly, and it’s something that could really change our understanding of the Constitution.
Jamie Mitchell:
But interesting is when the Dobbs decision came into overturning Roe v Wade and sending that decision back to the states, that was almost a gleam of hope that we do have some good sense of how this order should take place, isn’t it?
Greg Schaller:
I think so, and I think there’s a lot of critics maybe of the Roberts Court, but I do think that his approach to judicial constitutional interpretation is one of more deference going to elected officials than from the courts. And you see that in the number of cases that the Roberts Court has taken up, which is half of what previous chief justices have done. So he’s saying, no, we’re going to allow the lawmaking branches to figure these things out. It’s not the purview of the Supreme Court. And in certain cases, like Dobbs, I think is saying, yeah, this is something that since the Constitution is silent on, it should be left to the states for their judgment for the people of the States and their judgment. So while I’m not always happy, I certainly wasn’t happy with the Affordable Care Act decision written by Justice Roberts. I do think in general he has a better interpretation of the Constitution on many of these issues and showing greater deference to the states.
Jamie Mitchell:
Greg, thank you. It’s been fascinating. Checkout Colorado Christian University and the Centennial Institute. Thank you again for joining us. Friends, I hope if you’ve caught anything today, we must be careful about our founders. We have endured these years and we need to continue to do that to make this nation great, which takes courage. And so live and lead with courage.
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