The U.S. Constitution "has ceased to be an instrument and has become an impediment," says Rexford Guy Tugwell, a survivor of the New Deal's brain trust.
He says it reasonably, mildly, and from the sunny tranquillity of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Calif. There, he and 23 other tweedy, intellectual fellows have devoted the better part of a decade to rewriting the Constitution. Now in its 35th draft, their version of the document would, in Tug-well's words, "let law catch up with life." Most Americans assume that the world's oldest living written Constitution got that way...