Need for Revision of the State Constitution

   Some of the reasons for this proposal for the revision of the 1901 Constitution are as follows:

A. There are now 571 amendments to our "bloated constitution." In order to read the constitution, you must wade through all of these amendments. For example, if you want to read correctly Section 48 of the constitution, which prescribes the time and place of meetings of the legislature and the maximum length of legislative sessions, you must also read Amendments Nos. 39, 57 and 339, which, although they do not say so, actually amend Section 48. Another example, if you read through the constitution looking for a provision authorizing the state income tax, you will not find it (there was no income tax in 1901) unless you read Amendment No. 25 (which was adopted and ratified in 1933). However, you also need to read Amendment No. 61, since Amendment No. 25 is superseded in part by Amendment No. 61.

B. A large number of the provisions of the 1901 Constitution are truly obsolete because they are no longer in effect. For example, 377 of the 610 words of Amendment No. 61 (respecting the state income tax) are no longer effective, since they describe how income tax proceeds in the state treasury on September 30, 1947 were to be used then. Only the remaining 233 words of Amendment No. 61 relate to the use of such tax proceeds after September 30, 1947.

C. Some of the provisions of the 1901 Constitution have been declared by the courts to be unconstitutional under the United States Constitution and, as a result, are no longer effective. An example of this is Section 102, which provides that "[t]he legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro."

D. There appears to be a general public consensus that the 1901 Constitution is obsolete and should be replaced or revised.

E. The press continues to remind the public of the need for a revision of the 1901 Constitution. Examples of this are (i) The Birmingham News editorial of December 15, 1994, entitled "Happy birthday, now is as good a time as any to begin fixing a broken, bloated constitution" and (ii) Ted Bryant's column, entitled "How do we get new constitution?", which appeared in the November 8, 1994 Birmingham Post-Herald.

Proposal

   The following is a proposal for a revision of the 1901 Constitution:

1. Our "broken, bloated constitution" would be repaired and shortened to a workable, readable constitution by (i) deleting the obsolete, irrelevant and unconstitutional provisions and (ii) recompiling and reorganizing the remaining provisions without changing existing state constitutional law.

2. No change in the substance of the provisions of the 1901 Constitution would be made in the process of recompiling and reorganizing the provisions, and only truly obsolete and invalid provisions would be deleted. All of the prior efforts to revise the 1901 Constitution have failed because of, in large part, political opposition to real and perceived substantive changes in state law resulting from the proposed revisions. The guiding principal of this revision would be the production of a new constitution containing a correct and accurate statement of existing Alabama constitutional law. Actually, many of the substantive provisions of our constitution have already been revised and modernized by the 571 amendments. For example, Amendment No. 328 completely rewrote the Judicial Article, and it has been cited as an outstanding model for other states. If our constitution were further revised as herein proposed, it would be much more modern and workable than most people realize.

3. Since about 70% of the 571 amendments apply only to a particular county or city, all such local amendments would be reorganized into a new local government article that would be located at the end of the constitution. Within this local government article, the local provisions for each county and city would be arranged alphabetically by county, so a person interested only in the provisions respecting his or her county would not have to read through all of the local provisions for other counties.

Implementation

   This proposal would be implemented as follows:

1. The Governor would appoint a "Constitution Revision Committee" to review this proposal. If the committee decided to recommend this proposal, it would prepare a report to the Governor describing the proposal and explaining why the proposal was being recommended.

2. If the Governor approved a committee report recommending this proposal, the committee would then draft an amendment to Article XVIII (the amending article) of the 1901 Constitution, which would authorize the Governor to propose and submit to the legislature a general revision of the entire 1901 Constitution that would, without changing the substance of state constitutional law, (i) delete obsolete, irrelevant and unconstitutional provisions and (ii) recompile and reorganize the remaining provisions. The amendment to Article XVIII would further provide that any such proposed revision of the constitution submitted by the Governor would have to be approved by a three-fifths vote of both houses of the legislature and then submitted to the electorate for adoption. Of course, the amendment to Article XVIII would itself first have to be proposed by the legislature and voted upon by the electorate. Such a two-step process for a general revision of the entire constitution is apparently required by the Alabama Supreme Court's interpretation of Article XVIII. In State v. Manley, 441 So.2d 864 (Ala. 1983), the court held that until such time as Article XVIII is amended to remove some of its restrictions on amending the constitution, the legislature does not have the power to submit a complete revision of the constitution to the electorate.

3. If the aforesaid amendment to Article XVIII were adopted, the Governor's Constitution Revision Committee would then prepare the proposed general revision of the 1901 Constitution.

4. If the Governor approved the proposed revision prepared by his Constitution Revision Committee, he would ask the legislature to approve the revision and submit it to the electorate for adoption.

Conclusion

   A needed general revision of the 1901 Constitution can be successfully addressed, without changing our existing constitutional law by implementation of this proposal. The prior attempts at general constitutional revision in Alabama failed primarily because of strong political opposition created by constitutional law changes contained in the proposed revisions. However, substantive changes to the 1901 Constitution have already been made by the 571 amendments-many of which have updated and improved it. If our "bloated constitution" were further revised as herein proposed, it would be a modern and workable constitution.