Legislative Wrap-up
| Publication year | 2022 |
| Pages | 0366 |
Othni J. Lathram
Director, Legislative Services Agency
olathram@lsa.state.al.us
For more information, visit www.lsa.alabama.gov.
Ceremonial bill-signing of Act 2022-111 which authorized the placement of the Proposed Constitution of Alabama of 2022 on the ballot for ratification
THE ALABAMA CONSTITUTION OF 2022: A (Not Too) Short History of How It Came to Be Proposed
On November 8, 2022, the people of Alabama will have an opportunity to vote on the ratification of the proposed Constitution of Alabama of 2022. While the substantive differences encompassed in the proposed constitution compared to our current state constitution are minimal, its adoption would be a significant step forward in having a governing document that better reflects the Alabama of the 21st Century and that is accessible to all her residents. This process was made possible by the ratification of Amendment 951 in 2020 and the unanimous adoption of the proposed constitution by the legislature during the 2022 Regular Legislative Session. The proposed draft compiles 121 years of amendments that reflect the will of the voters to change the constitution over time.
Background
When it was adopted, the 1901 Constitution was Alabama's fifth constitution in an approximately 40-year period (and sixth overall). Many extensive works have been written over the years, and it would be impossible to do justice to any reasonable level of background on it in this space,1 but one significant feature is that it was written to greatly restrict the actions of state and local government absent a constitutional amendment which in each instance requires voter approval. This restrictiveness led to a process whereby issues both great and small were addressed through the proposing of constitutional amendments. To date, the 1901 Constitution has been amended 978 times with nearly 750 of those amendments applying to a single county or municipality, including to allow things as simple as using public funds to build roads.
Many efforts over the past 50 years have been made to try and reform, reorganize, or re-write all or part of the document with mixed success. In 1973, then-Chief Justice Howell Heflin was successful in passing and ratifying a much-needed rewrite to update the Judicial Article (Article VI). In the early 1980s, the legislature passed a new proposed constitution, championed by Governor Fob James, only to have the Alabama Supreme Court hold that such a method failed to comport with any procedure provided in the constitution.2 After that ruling, most efforts centered on a less comprehensive, article-by-article approach to updating the constitution. This included the ratification of a new Suffrage and Elections Article (Article VIII) in 1996 and the Constitutional Revision Commission of 2011,3 which successfully led to the updating of the Separation of Powers (Article III)...
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