Thread:Comments:Ireland votes to overturn 35-year-old constitutional ban on abortion/What does this mean elsewhere?/reply

There are several interlocking strategic decisions in the design of the US Constitution that give it different dynamics than some of these other national constitutions we've been covering lately. The US Constitution is meant to be a short document setting down very general, resilient basic rules without getting bogged down in details (a little like the Style guide :-p); the amendment process is accordingly made deliberately very difficult, though not, of course, impossible. Amendments to the US Constitution take the form of addenda, not specifying changes to the pre-existing text (which remains in place even after the amendment, just no longer in force to the extent it's been superseded). And this means that amendments themselves tend to embody big principles, in self-contained form, rather than clarifications of interpretation, as such. Flexibility of interpretation is part of how the US Constitution is meant to function.