YaleCoursesModern Moves, Part 1 | America's Written Constitution with Akhil Reed Amar
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The final chapter of the text 0:09
You have reached the last part of this walk through the written constitution, following the same order as the 2005 book America's Constitution, a biography. The story ran from the founding era, through the Bill of Rights, the eleventh and twelfth amendments, then to the Civil War amendments ending slavery and guaranteeing equality, then to the progressive era amendments on income tax, direct election of senators, and woman suffrage. Now the focus turns to the late twentieth century amendments, the final chapter of that book.
Prohibition and its repeal 2:00
Before moving ahead, you get a quick look back at the eighteenth and twenty first amendments, which were skipped over quickly earlier because the twenty first simply undoes the eighteenth. The eighteenth amendment, enacting prohibition, fit the progressive era spirit of clean government reforms like direct election of senators and woman suffrage, and it drew strong support from women through groups like the Women's Christian Temperance Union, partly because of fears that men were drinking away their wages and turning violent at home. Prohibition also had a wartime angle, since grain used for beer was seen as needed for World War I. It turned out to be a failed experiment, driving liquor into speakeasies and organized crime, and by the Great Depression the government needed the tax revenue liquor could bring back into the open. Part of the reversal also traces to process: prohibition passed through malapportioned state legislatures that overweighted rural, dry areas, while the twenty first amendment was ratified through specially elected conventions that acted more like one person, one vote, giving cities a fairer voice.
The two term amendment stands alone 11:01
The twenty second amendment, ratified in 1951, sits by itself chronologically, coming about twenty years after the prohibition era amendments and about ten years before the next cluster in the 1960s. The original Constitution allowed a president to be reelected indefinitely, but George Washington set the precedent of stepping down after two terms, a choice later presidents like Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson followed. The tradition was never fully settled, since Grant considered a non-consecutive third term, Cleveland won two non-consecutive terms and wanted a third, and Theodore Roosevelt argued that giving up a third consecutive term did not mean giving up the presidency forever. Franklin Roosevelt broke the pattern entirely by winning four terms, dying early in the fourth, and this led directly to the twenty second amendment as a rebuke against any one leader becoming indispensable, especially in a world watching Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. Many states later added similar term limits for governors, often allowing non-consecutive terms.
Term limits and the rise of vice presidents 20:31
One clear effect of the two term amendment is that presidents become lame ducks the moment their second term begins, which is part of why Nixon resigned, Clinton was impeached, Reagan was wounded by Iran-Contra, and Bush faced a weaker final stretch. At the state level, some term limited governors have tried running their spouses as stand ins, as with George and Lurleen Wallace, and Ma Ferguson in Texas. At the federal level, the more lasting change has been the rise of vice presidents, since a president barred from a third term can still try to extend his influence through his chosen successor. Before the twenty second amendment only about fifteen percent of vice presidents ever won their party's presidential nomination, but since then more than half have, as seen with Nixon after Eisenhower, Humphrey after Johnson, Ford after Nixon, Bush after Reagan, and Gore after Clinton. These same themes, one person one vote and the political partnership between president and vice president, will carry into the next lecture on the amendments of the 1960s.
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