High Fallutin'

I have ten pages left to read for my constitutional law reading, due tomorrow, and I can't stand much more. The material is so devoid of life. I fail to see any utility in it whatsoever.

So much of the reading focuses on history. But any reading of history focusin not on the future impact, but on the immediate impact of legislation, without regard for social, military, and economic history, and focusing squarely on legal theories and ancient texts, fails miserably.

Constitutional law should to some extent delve into history in order to understand originalism / constructionalism. But I take issue with the nonsensical theories mentioned in the discussion sections of the text. These theories go on and on about justificaiotns for the passing of amendments. They attempt to forge one consistent, overarching theory explaining the constitution and / or its constituent parts.

I see no value in the various authors' arguments. There appears to me to be no utility whatsoever in arguing such consistent theories, when in fact the Constitution is such a polyglot, a jigsaw puzzle of disparate and disconnected politicking, and compromising. Specifically, it seems to me that the legitimacy of the fourteenth amendment is wholly uniteresting. Was the amendment illegitimate? From a strict sense, yes. The Congress did not meet, because the South had seceded from the Union. To the victor go the spoils. The book inquires whether any Federal military presence can effect amendments by the same logic. The answer is a clear and convincing 'no', it would seem. In two-hundred and fifty years of U.S. history, only once has the country gone to war against itself. And in order to repair the Union (an entirely functional / utilitarian argument), changes need to be made. The Constitutional justificaiton for an amendment seems wholly irrelevant.