“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work, reporting or approval of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to [email protected].
Amend With Caution: Why Constitutional Changes Are Rarely Necessary
A perspective from Candi Tucker
North Carolina has had three constitutions.
The first was written when our state joined a brand-new nation. The second emerged after the Civil War, when North Carolina finally prohibited slavery and secession. The third, and current, Constitution was adopted in 1971, not because the entire document needed reinventing, but because decades of amendments had cluttered the 1868 Constitution.
History is repeating itself.
Constitutional amendments are supposed to be rare. They are supposed to matter. They are meant to alter foundational principles or governmental structure when absolutely necessary. They are not to serve as campaign slogans frozen into law.
The North Carolina General Assembly increasingly uses constitutional amendments as ordinary legislation.
It uses them to legislate beyond its own term limits, protect political legacies, and create systems that future legislatures cannot easily undo.
The United States Constitution offers a useful contrast. Across 238 years, it has added only 27 amendments. Most stand permanently alongside the original text. Only the 18th and 21st Amendments directly contradict one another.
The Constitution itself remains remarkably short. Its meaning evolves through interpretation, court decisions, and changing societal understanding. Consider the 14th Amendment: in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1898, it was interpreted to permit segregation. In Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, that same amendment became the basis for ending segregation in public schools.
The words did not change. Our understanding did.
That is how constitutions are supposed to work.
Laws are passed. Courts review them. Legislatures revise them. But constitutions should remain reserved for truly fundamental protections or structural necessities.
North Carolina has lost sight of that distinction.
Take the 2018 amendment guaranteeing the “right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife.” The amendment declares these rights shall be preserved “subject only to laws enacted by the General Assembly.”
In other words: hunting and fishing are protected unless lawmakers regulate them.
Duh.
That is already how laws work.
If the General Assembly can regulate the activity anyway, why elevate it to constitutional status? Why permanently clutter the state constitution with language that changes nothing?
Unless, of course, the point is not governance but politics.
North Carolina increasingly treats constitutional amendments as messaging tools — symbolic victories designed to energize voters and cement ideological branding into the state’s highest legal document.
And now, once again, the amendment machine is running.
This legislative session has produced proposals to cap income taxes, cap property taxes, define life as beginning at fertilization, require mail-in voters to include photo identification, create a constitutional right to “engage in farming and forestry,” reinforce right-to-work laws, alter how State Board of Education members are selected, and spell out procedures for gubernatorial appointments.
Some of these ideas may sound appealing on the surface. That is exactly the point.
Of course people dislike higher taxes. But people also like roads, fire departments, police departments, libraries, and public schools. As North Carolina continues lowering income taxes and reducing corporate tax obligations, public services still require funding.
That money must come from somewhere.
And while the proposed income tax cap may appear harmless today — especially since the current rate is already lower than the proposed ceiling — constitutionalizing it limits future flexibility during economic downturns, emergencies, or population growth. Legislatures decades from now may face realities we cannot currently predict.
The same concern applies to proposed property tax limitations. The General Assembly already possesses the authority to regulate local taxation through ordinary legislation. Embedding restrictions into the Constitution ties the hands of local governments trying to respond to local needs.
Constitutions are supposed to establish governing frameworks, not preemptively block future policymaking.
Other proposals move even further into ideological territory. Constitutional definitions regarding fertilization attempt to settle deeply contested moral, medical, and scientific debates permanently through constitutional language. Voter ID requirements for absentee ballots, despite already existing statutory election laws, similarly elevate ordinary policy disputes into constitutional mandates.
Why?
Why all the amendments? Why now?
Why are lawmakers creating constitutional solutions for problems that often do not exist?
Meanwhile, truly structural reforms such as addressing partisan gerrymandering and passing a budget a year late remain conspicuously absent. Perhaps those changes would actually limit legislative power instead of entrenching it.
The strategy is politically obvious. Constitutional amendments drive turnout. They energize loyal voters. And yes, loyal voters should absolutely participate. Every registered voter should.
But voters should also understand what they are being asked to do.
A constitutional amendment is not a temporary law. It is not a four-year policy platform. It is not campaign literature.
It is supposed to be permanent.
Legislators should govern within their terms, not attempt to govern indefinitely through constitutionalization of ordinary politics.
And there is one final question worth asking:
When the political pendulum swings, because it always does, will we be comfortable with future legislatures responding by adding even more constitutional amendments to undo these?
If every political majority writes its agenda into the Constitution, eventually the Constitution stops being a framework for government and becomes a running list of partisan victories.
That is not constitutional protection.
That is constitutional clutter.
By Candi Tucker, Teacher and Community Advocate
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
Viewpoints: Constitutional Changes Are Rarely Necessary Chapelboro.com.
Hence then, the article about viewpoints constitutional changes are rarely necessary was published today ( ) and is available on chapelboro ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Viewpoints: Constitutional Changes Are Rarely Necessary )
Also on site :
- My 5-Year-Old Told Us What Grandpa Did to Him. Now My Husband Wants My Parents Out of Our Lives.
- Scientists Reveal the Daily Step Count That May Delay Alzheimer’s by 7 Years
- Saudi Arabia: Russia’s most important guest at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum