Amendments or Addenda?

The Bill of Rights. Amendments or additions? A reasonable question and a good distinction.  Addenda. I owe the point and the distinction to James Soriano. It's obvious when you think about it, but the question hadn't occurred to me.

And always give credit where credit us due, else you'll end up like the Big Guy, a terminally unrepentant serial plagiarist and an 'inspiration' to such other 'presidents' as Claudine Gay.

Distinctions are the lifeblood of thought. 

Comments

[James Soriano]

BV,

The distinction between a Constitutional amendment and an addendum came up to me from long-term memory. I recalled a passage to that effect in a *Commentary* essay I had read decades ago, which had the general title of, “Why Blacks and Women Were Left Out of the Constitution.”

On the AEI website I found what appears to be a reprint of it (May 1, 1987, by Robert A. Goldwin, 1920-2010), link below.

Here’s part of Goldwin’s text on the 19th Amendment:

“… we must observe that this article was an addition to the Constitution, but it amended nothing and was intended to amend nothing in the Constitution of the United States. No provision in the text had to be changed or deleted, because there was never any provision in the Constitution limiting or denying the right of women to vote. The barriers to voting by women had always been in the state constitutions or laws.”

By the way, Goldwin told his readers why blacks were left out of the Constitution. At the Philadelphia Convention the slave states wanted to include blacks in the decennial census, which would have increased the South's voting bloc in the House of Representatives. Excluding blacks from the census was the abolitionist position. Neither side could prevail; hence, the Three-Fifths Compromise.

https://www.aei.org/articles/why-blacks-women-and-jews-are-not-mentioned-in-the-constitution/