ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that constitutional critiques can be divided broadly into Madisonian and Jeffersonian approaches to change, and Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian approaches to the size of government. For James Madison, the "father" of the Constitution, no constitution was "too big to fail." Although a calcified constitution was to be undesirable and best avoided, "veneration" of the Constitution was necessary for it to survive. The Jeffersonian embrace of change lends itself easily to critics and arguments for reform. The Hamiltonian approach anticipated the future trajectory of political thought that has, mostly, championed expansion of the state. The chapter examines the twenty-first century revival of constitutional debate. Faced with popular discontent about politics, the Constitution has once again attracted a new set of critics who trace political dysfunction in large part to a constitutional source. Constitutional quality control requires the possible downsides to supposed remedies to be examined. Closer scrutiny suggests the Constitution is neither "radically defective" nor "imbecilic."
