The Wall Street Journal asked five experts across the political spectrum: What would you change about the U.S. Constitution if you could?

[Excerpts of article published under the heading “Changing the Constitution: Five Proposals for a More Perfect Union” on The Wall Street Journal website on 1 July 2026]

Changing the Constitution: Five Proposals for a More Perfect Union

[By Heidi Mitchell]

The U.S. Constitution is the oldest written national charter still in use, a 4,543-word framework that has anchored the American experiment for 238 years. Yet, for a living document intended to “secure the Blessings of Liberty,” as the preamble states, it has been pretty resistant to revision. In the two centuries since its ratification, it has been amended only 27 times—and 10 of those arrived all at once in the Bill of Rights.

That is by design: Changing the Constitution requires a formidable consensus, starting with two-thirds of the vote in both the House and the Senate, followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states. That seems daunting given today’s political landscape. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in 2019, the last amendment was in 1992, and that was just to codify a forgotten law from 1789.

Still, the herculean task didn’t dissuade us from asking five individuals from across the political spectrum to name the one thing they would change if they could do it with a magic wand. The biggest surprise: There was a lot of consensus. Most respondents mentioned the necessity of overhauling the Electoral College in some fashion and of codifying gender equality in some form. Even in a divided nation, it seems, we can still find common ground on some big issues.

Legislating belongs to Congress

I think the most neglected or perhaps forgotten word in the entire Constitution is the first word of the first sentence of Article One. That word is “ALL”—“All legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” It doesn’t say “some” or “most” powers, but “all.” The framers and ratifiers chose that word and meant it.

Legislation is supposed to be the exclusive domain of the Congress. This means the executive isn’t supposed to legislate, nor is the judiciary.

Yet we see presidents—of both parties—legislating under the guise of issuing executive orders or signing statements. We see judges legislating under the pretext of faithfully interpreting the Constitution. Presidents and judges need to understand that it isn’t their job to legislate. When they usurp the powers vested in the Congress, they violate the Constitution they have sworn to uphold. When the Congress abdicates its authority, it conspires in the constitutional offense.

We must return to the standard that legislation is the exclusive domain of the Congress, because all legislative powers are vested there. It is time we take that first word of the Constitution’s first article seriously.

—Robert George, professor of jurisprudence, Princeton University

Term limits for all

I favor any amendments that serve any of three core constitutional functions: restraining the federal government, protecting the liberties of the people, and making our democracy work.

Begin with term limits: We have them for the president (thankfully so!); how about two terms for Senate and six in the House?
Some argue that term limits are antidemocratic because they limit choice. I respond that no one since before Aristotle has responsibly thought that an unadulterated democracy was a good idea at scale. Democracy is essential to ensure power is responsive. But, unchecked, it is a chaotic system. Plenty of things are antidemocratic and nevertheless work in service of the people.

For the Supreme Court, I propose 18-year terms. Justices would then rotate to “senior status,” staying available to hear cases on an as-needed basis.

—RJ Lyman, president of Niskanen Center

Farewell, Electoral College

We should scrap the Electoral College. A new amendment could make the presidential vote turn on the popular-vote outcome.
It is hard to come up with a coherent argument for the Electoral College if we believe democracy turns on the vote of the public. The founders wanted intermediaries between the public and major decisions. For example, in the original Constitution, there were no direct elections of senators. Similarly, the Electoral College was intended to be a layer of elites who could interpose themselves between the voters and major electoral decisions.

Historically, these intermediate layers were also about the practicalities of transportation and the difficulty of getting election results to Washington. But we have developed into an inclusive modern society, where voting is no longer confined to landowning white men. We simply don’t need those layers anymore. At best, the Electoral College is merely a pro forma rubber stamp. God help us if it is ever more than that—which is what the election deniers in 2020 tried to make it.
The danger of the Electoral College is real. The presidency should never again be decided by a vote of the House by delegation, as it was in 1800 and 1824, which makes no sense in the modern era. We must remove this vestigial oversight and ensure the outcome cannot be gained by unscrupulous parties.

The other problem with the Electoral College is that it confines presidential elections to about seven swing states. If you live in one of the other 43, including big states like California and Texas, the candidates don’t actively seek your vote. They don’t visit your states, and they don’t spend money there. While some argue that a popular vote would unfairly advantage big states with advertising dollars, that argument is immaterial in the modern era, because political advertising is moving online and to connected TV, meaning voters are being targeted through national companies like Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

—Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president for public affairs, The Third Way

Rethink the First Amendment

If I could change one thing about the Constitution, it would be the interpretive philosophy judges bring to it.
Take campaign finance. In Citizens United, the court interpreted the First Amendment to mean that the state cannot meaningfully limit the power of wealthy individuals to spend money to influence elections. I think that gets the First Amendment totally backward. George Mason and other proponents of the Bill of Rights intended the First Amendment to prevent the emergence of an aristocracy—or what we would today call an oligarchy. If you told Mason that 250 years later the court would use his anti-oligarchy amendment to protect the right of the wealthy to spend unlimited money to control government, he would be outraged.

We must return to a reading of the Constitution that recognizes its fundamental democratic commitments. Once you start reading the Constitution in this light, you start to see that there is simply no way that cases like Citizens United and others are correctly decided.

—Jay Swanson, senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice

Equal gender rights

I would enshrine gender equality in the Constitution, explicitly clarifying that the Equal Rights Amendment is part of our founding document. There are still open questions about its ratification, but we need an ERA now—especially as people are actively talking about rescinding the 19th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government and states from denying U.S. citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex. There are both symbolic and practical reasons for an explicit commitment to equal gender rights.

—Melissa Murray, professor of constitutional law at New York University, and co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast