Referendum-driven constitutional change would destroy constitutional permanence.
Evidence
In the first place, such a plan would make the Constitution a political football: no supermarket parking lot would be safe from petition-floggers, seeking signatures and handing out buttons. On every ballot, there would be a long list of referenda. The commercials that now are given over to candidates would be joined by thirty-second spots on constitutional amendments, and no sooner would one of these be adopted than its repeal would become the focus of the special group that finds its identity as the doppelganger of the group that proposed the amendment in the first place. The permanence that a constitution requires cannot survive in such an — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 262
Categorization
- SEED: The argument that direct-democracy mechanisms erode what they aim to empower is a reusable angle for essays on constitutional design.
- XREF: connects to: Written constitutional rights fail when the community collectively opposes them; A single political boss could reverse a referendum’s outcome by letting it be resubmitted