Why Constitutional Veneration Blocks Reform: Survey Evidence

constitutional amendmentUnited States Political Behaviorstatus quo biasSurvey Experimentsconstitutional attachmentLaw Courts Justice @Pol. Behav.15 R files 1 Stata file 4 datasets Dataverse

Why This Question Matters

Scholars and commentators often blame an almost reverential attachment to the U.S. Constitution for making reform politically difficult. Christopher Dawes and James R. Zink test that claim directly, investigating whether a psychological attachment to constitutional institutions — what they call “constitutional veneration” or constitutional status quo bias — makes people less willing to accept policy changes that would require amending constitutions.

How the Authors Test It

Dawes and Zink report two survey experiments that probe public reactions to proposals that would alter constitutional rules. The experiments are designed to detect whether telling respondents that a proposal requires constitutional change (versus implying it does not) affects their support, and whether this effect appears at both the federal and state levels.

What They Find

Respondents assign extra normative value to policies presented as part of the constitutional status quo, and that added value reduces support for proposals that would change the constitution.
This status quo bias is not limited to the federal Constitution: a similar reluctance appears when respondents evaluate proposals that would amend state constitutions.
The authors interpret these results as evidence of a psychological barrier to constitutional change that complements the well-known institutional obstacles to amendment.

Why It Matters

These findings show that beyond procedural hurdles, public opinion itself can harden constitutional arrangements. Successful efforts to design or pass amendments may need to address not only formal institutional constraints but also the emotional and normative attachments citizens have to constitutional texts and symbols.

What Comes Next

The paper points to further questions about how durable constitutional attachments are across different populations, how they interact with partisan cues, and whether messaging can mitigate status quo bias when constitutional change is proposed.

Article card for article: The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of "Constitutional Veneration"

The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of "Constitutional Veneration" was authored by Christopher Dawes and James R. Zink. It was published by Springer in Pol. Behav. in 2016.