Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-07-06
Views and Reviews
About Long and Short State
Constitutions
Consultations

quently made to me with slight variations:
Il hope the convention will give us a short
constitution. We don't want any of those
lengthy new-fangled documents l believe a
constitution should be confined to essentials
and leave the details to be inserted in the
statutes by the Legislature"
This raises the interesting query, What is
a short constitution" and this question | have
tried to answer for the satisfaction of my own
curiosity. All the constitutions of the United
States and of the several states have been gath
cred together in one compilation called "Ket-
teborough on State Constitutions" Although
printed in small type and on thin paper, they
make nice little volume of 1,645 pages. The
constitutions here set forth are arranged
alphabetically by states, together with the
amendments that have been made. OF course
some pages are partially blank, but the number
of pages of printed matter allotted to each fur
nisheS rough measure of the length
perhaps more familiar to most people than any
state constitution, may visualize that by not
ing that it occupies II pages of this volume
and that no state has constitution of so small
compass. The two that come nearest to it are
those of Connecticut and Vermont each filling
10 pages, and other short ones, by this sort of
measurement. are Rhode Island and Indiana
with IL pages. then Iowa, Kansas, North Caro-
lima with lS pages each, New Hampshire ex-
tending into the 10Th page. and all the rest
running lTOHl ~ ana 20 ana 20 upwards.
At the other end of the line we have Louis
lana with the longest constitution of the lot,
filling 81 pages, being nearly eight times long
as the constitution OF the United States. Cali
fornias constitution requires 20 pages, and is
therefore. over six times as bulky as the federal
constitution Oklahoma's constitution fills So
pages, Coorado's constitution AZ pages, Ken
tucky's constitution IS pages, Mary lands consti-
tuition AZ pages, the Texas constitution 40 pages
Nebraska's present constitution, with all its
amendments,is really modest in demanding only
% pages of the book, which is probably trihe
below the average.
In the matter of length it will be observed
that the southern states as rule present more
bulky documents than the northern states, pre-
sumably because they go into great detail about
their election machinery, especially designed to
keep the blacks from voting regardless of the
federal prohibition against abrdgement of the
franchise; also that for the mostpart the earlier
state constitutions the short ones this,
despite the fact that the second largest, that of
California, was framed and adopted 40 years
ago. Louisana's 87-page fundamental law is
the product of a constitutional convention,
which sat in 1918 and which was in session only
II days
While all of the constitutions have been
more or less modified by amendment, excepting
those most recently adopted, the basic law that
is to say the last revision dates back over a
example, still goes under its constitution of
1880, all changes having been by means of
amendment. Vermont's constitution bears the
date of 1898 and Names of 1919. Vermont
called constitutional convention, in 1913, but
when the delegates assembled, instead of writ
ing new constitution, they merely wrote
amendments to make it meet conditions.
Ohio had similar experience in its last consttu-
tional convention which met in 1872 The old
constitution of 1851 in it's main features was
left intact subject to the proposal of some very
radical amendments, which, however, were not
ratified in their entirety.
|. Nebraska had three constitutional conven-
tons, but only two constitutions. The terri
tory achieved statehood under constitution
framed in 1866. An effort was made in 1871 to
get new and broader constitution, but the
work of the convention repudated at the
polls. The second effort gave us the present
constitution of 1875, which has stood up now
with very few amendments for nearly IS years.
The record shows that more proposed amend
ments have been beaten in Nebraska than
adopted, although one section, that relating to
the makeup of the supreme court, has been
! amended twice. A woman suffrage amendment
| has been voted on and defeated twice, prohib-
ton first rejected, finally adopted. In
| 1897, IL proposed amendments submitted
all at one time and all of them rejected. The
last one submitted, requiring full naturalization
| for voting citizenship, was adopted last year.
| 1t will be seen therefore that the first decision
of our coming convention will have to be
whether to undertake comprehensive revision
| to be ratified as whole, or to restrict its work
| to specific amendments.