New constitution
Posted on Feb 01, 2010 in Opinion
Late Thursday night, the Senate Constitution and Elections Committee unanimously voted to pass a bill sponsored by Rodger Smitherman of Birmingham. The bill will allow the citizens of Alabama to vote on whether or not to hold a constitutional convention to rewrite the Alabama Constitution.
The constitution is more than 350,000 words long. It has more than 800 amendments, is more than 12 times the length of the average state constitution, is 40 times the length of the U.S. Constitution, and is longer than any constitution in use anywhere in the world.
This is very disconcerting when you realize that any document of that size is going to contradict itself. When you cannot get a clear and concise answer from the state constitution, it gives politicians the ability to play in the many gray areas in order to pervert their office as well as give judges the ability to legislate almost any issue from the bench. However, this is only a small part of it.
Many of the amendments are part of the Jim Crow laws used to disenfranchise African Americans and steal not only their vote but also their liberty. While other amendments cancel these out, the supremacy clause, which states that when a state law and a national law are in opposition the federal law is law of the land, took care of many more. Nevertheless, a smart lawyer can probably find something in that mess to build a case for just about anything.
Public officials used other amendments to pay bribery. The state actually had amendments where they ruled that a certain city or county office holder had to make a certain amount of money, and later the politician’s crony got these high-paying jobs.
Forget the fact that we need a constitution that is easier to for the courts to understand. Forget that so much of it does not belong there anymore. Alabama bares the shame of many injustices, and so many of those injustices were toward blacks both before and after the Civil War.
Theses sins are like skeletons in the closet; they are hard to get rid of. However, in this case that document is our closet, and it helps to keep alive the prejudices and hatred that people feel toward their fellow man. While most would say, you cannot hide your secrets. That does not mean that you have to put them out front and center.
Alabama’s sixth constitution will never disappear, saved in museums and on computers, but as long as it is our current constitution, it makes things harder — harder for us to put aside the hatred of the past, harder for us to look on one another as one people, and harder for us to be proud of our legacy as Alabamians.
So now, is the time: call or write to your state senator and tell him or her that you think we need a new legacy in Alabama. We need a new direction in Alabama. We need a new constitution in Alabama.
Email: opinion@Inside Uab.com
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