State Constitutions: Tough to Write a Good One

• Share

"A constitution," said Justice Benjamin Cardozo, "states, or ought to state, not rules for the passing hour but principles for an expanding future." In the U.S., most state constitutions pay no heed to Cardozo's dictum.

Instead, most begin by floridly invoking the help of what at least one refers to as "the Great Legislator of the Universe." From there, they wander. A wordy example is Louisiana's 1,000-page backbreaker, which gets into such minute areas as declaring Huey Long's birthday forever a legal holiday. Georgia's offers $250,000 to the state's first discoverer of oil. California's exempts from taxation certain "fruit- and nutbearing trees under the age of four years." Such details belong in the statutory code, not the constitution.

Tauter & Trimmer. Recognizing the need for modernization, a growing number of states are convening constitutional conventions (ConCons to headline writers). Maryland's has just got under way, and 22 other states are considering or have recently finished similar undertakings. As ConCons go, the one that met in New York last summer was no better or worse than most oth ers. And after laboring nearly six months in Albany and spending $10 million on the project, the Democratic-controlled body produced a document that was generally tauter, trimmer and improved.

Perhaps as worthwhile as any other achievement is the fact that the new constitution is only 23,000 words long —v. 47,000 in the old one. Under the new provisions, citizens were explicitly given standing to sue the state for the first time. The diverse local welfare programs will be taken over administratively and financially by the state within the next decade. A new truth-in-billing clause requires a clear statement of interest costs to credit buyers. The Governor's office is empowered to make needed administrative reforms. A "community development" provision authorizes public grants and loans to the private sector for improvement of economic opportunities and slums, and the state is at last allowed to increase its bor rowing without having to go constantly to the voters.

Such were some of the pluses. ConCon also produced some minuses —none more emotional than the inaccurately named Blaine Amendment.*

The clause prohibited New York from aiding "any institution of learning wholly or in part under the direction or control of any religious denomination." The new constitution opens the door to aid to private schools, religious or otherwise, so long as their rolls are open to persons of any race, creed or color.

On balance, Bobby Kennedy liked the new constitution, so did the AFL-CIO state executive. New York's Roman Catholic archdiocese was delighted, since its parochial school system is in bad financial straits. But all three of New York City's major dailies came out against it. So did leaders of the League of Women Voters, the nonpartisan Citizens Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. The religious-schooling controversy, old-fashioned as it is, was threatening to sink the constitution completely. Then last week in a surprising move, Governor Nelson Rockefeller came out in favor.