The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will.
- Chief Justice John Marshall [19 U.S. 64]
THE COMMON PERCEPTION is that the Constitution has endured essentially un-changed for more than 220 years and should remain that way except for an occa¬sional, narrowly-defined amendment. For that matter, neither the Congress, nor the presidency, nor the Supreme Court has changed much pro forma. The limited number and scope of formal amendments demonstrates this. Aside from the Bill of Rights—Amendments I through X plus XXVII—which were more or less concur¬rent with the original Constitution, and disregarding Amendments XVIII and XXI, the number of remaining amendments
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The sixteenth (in-come tax) and seventeenth (direct election of senators) were both ratified in 1913. But after that, no amendment imposed a fundamental change. The eighteenth and twenty-first have already been mentioned. The nineteenth, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-sixth all extended the franchise but that was not a fundamental change. Lastly, the twentieth, twenty-second, and the twenty-fifth addressed prob¬lems with election mechanics, term limits for the presidency, and succession of office. But this does not mean that fundamental changes to Constitutional law ended. On the contrary they continued full tilt to the point where formal amend¬ments were bypassed. This refers to the paradigm shift in the way the country operated, necessitated by the Great Depression followed by the exigencies of World War II. And it all came under the leadership of a person with unabashed political charm. At first, Roosevelt was countered by the Supreme Court at almost every turn. Then he attempted to foist his infamous court-packing plan on the nation. The outcome was a pronounced tactical defeat followed by a strategic victory. This victory was marked by the equally famous commentary with respect to Justice Owen Roberts, who suddenly changed his jurisprudential perspective: “The switch in time that saved