Recent years have seen a revival of proposals to reform the Constitution in order to make it more democratic. University of Texas law professor Sandy Levinson has recently published a prominent book on the subject, as has well-known political scientist and pundit Larry Sabato. In our contribution to a symposium on constitutional reform , William and Mary law professor Neal Devins and I raise some questions about both the desirability and feasibility of proposals to democratize the Constitution. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

Recent years have seen renewed calls to revise the Constitution to make it more democratic. Unfortunately, efforts to "democratize" the Constitution face serious obstacles that advocates of reform have largely ignored. In particular, they have failed to grapple with the reality of widespread political ignorance, which both reduces the extent to which the Constitution can ever be fully democratic and makes the reform process more difficult.

Part I of this article notes that advocates of "democratizing" the Constitution rarely specify the theory of democratic participation they would like the Constitution to conform to. This is a very significant omission. There is more than one theory of participation and different theories have widely divergent implications for constitutional reform. Some theories such as "deliberative democracy," imply a much higher level of political knowledge in the electorate than is likely to be feasible in the foreseeable future....

Part III considers the implications of political ignorance and substantive concerns for the actual process of constitutional change. Widespread ignorance is likely to reduce the quality of constitutional reforms that can be instituted, since it might lead voters to support deeply flawed institutional reforms and create opportunities for manipulation by political elites. These dangers are heightened by the reality that any major constitutional changes are likely to occur as a result of a major political or economic crisis....