Constitutional meaning shifts through practice, precedent and political settlement without any formal amendment.
The US Constitution's text on federal power has barely changed since 1789 while its practical meaning has changed enormously through the commerce clause. The amendment count understates constitutional change by an order of magnitude.
In practice
- A company's written articles are unchanged for thirty years while the actual locus of decision has moved from the board to the founder to the executive committee.
- A club's rulebook says the AGM decides, and every decision for a decade has been taken by the chair and ratified.
- Standing
- Sometimes circulated as "Balkin's constitutional drift"; Balkin's own terms are living originalism and constitutional rot.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works