Are abridged versions of the Constitution common or unheard of?

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quidpropho@reddit

It's kind of self abridged. To understand it in function is to know all the Supreme Court decisions that have shaped and then reshaped its meaning.

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RoundandRoundon99@reddit

The main being the Supreme Court decision, deciding to give itself the power of constitutional review. Which … is not in the constitution.

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It is in the Constitution. The Constitution declares itself and the laws enacted pursuant to it to be the supreme law of the land and vests the courts with the entire judicial power of the United States.

That’s judicial review.

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RoundandRoundon99@reddit

That’s review. Not by whom. And can be interpreted under many different ways. The Jeffersonian argument against the case is very interesting to read.

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Der_Blaue_Engel@reddit

Adjudicated conflicts of laws is fundamentally a judicial function. This is pretty simple stuff.

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Ibbot@reddit

Hardly. The framers of the constitution talked about how the Article III judicial power included constitutional review while approving the draft. Some of them were even attorneys judges in cases where state courts were already exercising constitutional review. Then during the state ratification process they also discussed how federal courts would have that power under Article III. Federalists tended to think it was a good thing, and antifederalists tended to think it was a bad thing, but not a single person in a ratifying convention or publishing contemporaneously with ratification disagreed with the consensus that the constitution would give the judiciary the power of constitutional review.

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RoundandRoundon99@reddit

The framers may have discussed a bunch of things. Yet it’s not written. I bet many framers were against said arguments as well. At least Jefferson was. Indeed quite opposed to the seminal Marbury v. Madison (that Madison who basically wrote the constitution) decision. The Supreme Court Justice, Marshall was Jefferson’s first or second cousin and their relationship was already bad before the trial and terrible after.

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albertnormandy@reddit

Jefferson had no role in writing the Constitution.

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quidpropho@reddit

This guy Federalists

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AcanthaceaeOk3738@reddit

Marbury v. Madison is an obvious conclusion from the Cases and Controversies clause (and from Article III as a whole, really). That’s why it only took 14 years from ratification for the court to rule.

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Iamapartofthisworld@reddit

You are thinking of the Republican version

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EmptyJade77@reddit

I assume the copies currently available in the White House are abridged to include only Article II and the Second Amendment.

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Weird_Squirrel_8382@reddit

I remember a character on the TV show Scandal asking someone "did you go blind after the second amendment?" I don't think the current occupant has gotten that far.

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snoweel@reddit

I have seen versions with the superseded parts crossed out. Things repealed by subsequent amendments, such as the 3/5 compromise and the 18th amendment.

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logaboga@reddit

American constitutional law is highly predicated on the interpretation of specific words included in the document. For this reason, the constitution cannot be abridged. Part of it may be omitted if you’re just trying to include the main articles of each amendment, but not abridged

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Nercow@reddit

It's pretty short. The only reason someone would 'abridge' it, would be to fit some kind of political narrative

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gangofone978@reddit

There are debates over how punctuation impacts the meaning of clauses. An abridged version does not one any good.

Plus it isn’t very long. What would be the point?

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i-am-garth@reddit

An abridged version of the Constitution, where every word matters—and has been argued over for two centuries—is dangerous.

Our Constitution is short and can fit into a breast-pocket pamphlet. There’s no reason for it to be abridged.

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quietude38@reddit

There’s an ongoing debate about whether or not a comma can change the meaning of the Takings Clause!

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ghost_suburbia@reddit

You could spend a lifetime studying the interpretation of those words. It isn't always agreed, it isn't always simple. Condensing it gets you "the right to bear arms" while losing "a well regulated militia" for example.

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Der_Blaue_Engel@reddit

Or vice-versa.

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NoDepartment8@reddit

An annotated version would be more useful than an abridged version because it provides context to how the living Constitution is applied via case rulings. The Library of Congress Constitution page is a good reference and has links to PDF versions of the plain-text Constitution as well as an annotated version and, most importantly, describes their annotation methodology. Not all Constitutional interpretations available online are reliable.

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cdb03b@reddit

The Constitution is short and every word has vital legal meaning there is no way to abridge it.

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GSilky@reddit

It's like 6 or 7 pages.

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la-anah@reddit

An abridged version would be an interpreted version. Even if the intent was benign, it would have a political point of view that would inform what to leave out. Therefore it would only be useful for propaganda.

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machagogo@reddit

It's incredibly short as is, abridging it would be pretty silly.

I've never seen anyone carrying a pocket constitution personally.

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AcanthaceaeOk3738@reddit

Somewhat tangential but at the beginning of most new Congresses (January of odd numbered years), House Republicans will read the Constitution aloud on the House floor. But they leave out parts that were superseded by later parts — e.g. the Three Fifths Compromise.

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Ryebread095@reddit

Why do you want an abridged version of such a short short document?

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shelwood46@reddit

What would you want to leave out? You can often find the Preamble separate, or in song form, but the Constitution is pretty short and should not be abridged.

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young_trash3@reddit

Its very unheard of, its an incredibly short document with incredibly precise word choices. Abridged version would be essentially useless for anything beyond a nine year old's history class.

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WulfTheSaxon@reddit

Sometimes you might see only the original without any of the amendments, or only with the Bill of Rights.

I’ve never heard of an abridged version, though.

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Crazycatlover@reddit

Why bother? It's a pretty short document?

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sircastor@reddit

Not really. First of all, the constitution itself is very short. Even with all the amendments is fewer than 10,000 words. It's not abridged because there's not a lot of reason to.

That said, the amendments are frequently reduced to just their concepts rather than complete verbage. Such as: "The right to free speech", "the right to bear arms", "abolition of slavery", "Right for women to vote" etc.

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ReddyKiloWit@reddit

There are sites that have synopses of the sections of the Constitution and the Amendments, with links to the full text. Probably booklets printed like that as well. It's not an abridgement though. More of a table of contents for easy reference.

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Steerider@reddit

The only reason you'd want to abridge it is to alter what it actually says.

It is a brief and straightforward document. It does not need abridging.

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RektInTheHed@reddit

Why? The Constitution is a very short document, it's half the length of the NFL rulebook.

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FreeStateOfPortland@reddit

You can make a pocket size version with the full text. It really doesn’t have that many words in it.

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enNova@reddit

There are outlines that might be useful for studying (relating provisions to case law or principals), or different versions (such as in the form of catechisms)) but the document itself is short. Most have the Declaration of Independence and preamble. Some pocket constitutions include [your state’s constitutions] or other important documents/facts/etc.

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sneezhousing@reddit

Never seen an abridged version. I don't see.why it would be needed

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Neb-Nose@reddit

The Constitution doesn’t need to be abridged. It is way shorter than most people realize. You can read it in about five to 10 minutes.

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Felis_igneus726@reddit

The Constitution is not very long. It would be kind of silly to shorten it even further when it + all amendments + the Declaration of Independence (often printed together) already only take up usually around 40-50 pocket-sized pages, unabridged and in a fairly normal font size.
Literally every word in the Constitution and its amendments legally matters. There's already enough ambiguity and debate around how every single precise choice of wording should be interpreted without muddying the waters further by distributing abridged copies.

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atomfullerene@reddit

With regards to your second question, I've never heard of a pocket state constitution.

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Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit

As someone else said, it's not very long so it's easy to print the whole thing, but also it seems kind of pointless really. The whole thing is a complete unit and if you don't have it all you don't know what you don't know.

Google says a standard printed version (I think they mean in a full size book) is 5 to 10 pages. A pocket version they say might be 30 to 40 pages.

Do they print condensed versions of the Ten Commandments? I kind of feel it's similar although obviously I'm being a little bit funny.

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Coidzor@reddit

There isn't a legitimate reason to abridge the constitution. As you said, the document in full can be printed and pocket-sized.

I'm sure that there are educational handouts for certain classes where an entire article of the Constitution or an amendment or group of amendments is excerpted, though.

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Fit-Rip-4550@reddit

It's not meant to be abridged—ever.

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cranberry_spike@reddit

It's short. Abridging it would frankly be silly.

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NYSenseOfHumor@reddit

The average length of a written constitution is about 20,000 words, 40 single spaced pages.

The US constitution is about 4,600 words or 7,600 with amendments. That’s 10 pages without amendments or 15 pages with them.

What is there to abridge? It isn’t very long.

That it is so short was the point. Adding details would have prevented ratification. It’s been more than 200 years and we are still arguing over the same things that the writers and ratifiers did.

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Pleasant_Pen8744@reddit

When the Republicans read it aloud in Congress they left out the icky parts, like about blacks being 3/5ths of a person.

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Cool-Coffee-8949@reddit

It’s already the shortest (as well as the oldest) written Constitution still in use anywhere. You are much more likely to find annotated versions than shortened ones. Understandably, since it also seems to be one the most contested pieces of prose ever written. You’d think it would be hard to argue over what “person” means, but…

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RoundandRoundon99@reddit

It’s 7 pages long. There’s no abridged version other than children books.

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seifd@reddit

I don't know if you would call it abridged, but you can find copies of the Bill of Rights separate from the rest.

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MarionberryPlus8474@reddit

Part of the genius of the document is its brevity. Instead of trying to deal with every possible issue in detail it spells out basic principles in very broad language which can be interpreted as circumstances dictate.

This is a major reason I have little patience for “originalism“. If the authors of the constitution had wanted to detail every issue they could have written a document of hundreds of pages.

My copy fits in a shirt pocket, and includes the Declaration of Independence also.

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