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Will California lead the way? And will Tom Brokaw connect more dots?

By Jack M. Balkin

The New York Times has just posted a story suggesting that serious people are beginning to call for a new constitutional convention to revise a disastrously dysfunctional California constitution. Good for them!! Is it too much to hope that perhaps this development, should it come to pass, might generate at least a scintilla of conversation about our own decidedly imperfect Constitution?

I note also a recent op-ed by Tom Brokaw that concluded as follows:

Every state and every region in the country is stuck with some form of anachronistic and expensive local government structure that dates to horse-drawn wagons, family farms and small-town convenience.

If this is a reset, it?s time to reorganize our state and local government structures for today?s realities rather than cling to the sensibilities of the 20th century.

If we demand this from General Motors, we should ask no less of ourselves

Of course he's right, but wouldn't it be wonderful if he had gone on to suggest that it's not only our "state and local government structures" that we need to be thinking about? Hope springs eternal!

Full post as published by Balkinization on April 24, 2009 (boomark / email).