&gt;If the document is that far out of date, its meaning likely is too. The founding fathers were human too; skilled legislators to be sure, but we have skilled legislators today too.<p>I don&#x27;t see how a constitution can go &quot;out of date&quot;.  It&#x27;s the founding document for a nation - the individual states that compromise the US ratified a document that forms the basis of their association.  Individual words and phrases have gone out of common parlance, but to change the <i>meaning</i> of the document would require the agreement of the parties, i.e. the states.  Is it ever reasonable for the other party to tell you &quot;Now that you&#x27;ve signed this contract, we&#x27;re going to change it&quot;?<p>The genius of the US constitution is that it sets up a mechanism for a system of government without getting into policy.  Policy is decided by the legislature, and the legal code changes all the time.<p>But the structure has served us well and is better than, or at least no worse than, that of anyplace else.  Human nature hasn&#x27;t changed, after all, and there hasn&#x27;t been any real advancement in government for thousands of years.<p>The lawyering over language happens because a document is just a means of communication, after all - there&#x27;s no purpose in a written agreement if you&#x27;re going to allow the meaning of the words in that agreement to change.<p>&gt; Rather than try to stretch a document written for a very different time to apply to modern disputes, why not hold a new convention, with a remit not to figure out what people were thinking 200+ years ago, but to figure out the best answers to the questions we have today?<p>Because you don&#x27;t need to change the structure of a government to change policy.  The legislature is there to provide &quot;the best answers to the questions we have today&quot;.