A democratic government should serve its people through a commitment to justice, respect for the rule of law and the promotion of the common good. When developing the U.S. Constitution, the framers committed themselves to versions of these goals in the document’s preamble. Yet one might be forgiven for thinking that we are now in danger of returning to a society in which “we the people” are simply subjects meant to pay and obey, while those who govern us act only in their own interests to accumulate power and profit. Despite its lofty intentions, our Constitution is not helping matters.

The Constitution and the democracy it supports have become so sclerotic that even the processes for amendment and adaptation anticipated by its drafters seem impossible to contemplate or, at best, implausible as tools for meaningful change. As we celebrate 250 years of nationhood, the United States has reached a level of political and cultural polarization that many have compared to the years preceding the Civil War. The American people have settled into two very different visions of the kind of government they want and the economic and social values they seek to prioritize. The current system has failed spectacularly in its ability to satisfy either side, which has led to astonishing efforts to interpret the Constitution in ways that fit the needs of one view or the other, but in the end have simply furthered the case for an explicit recognition of a constitutional crisis.

At its most basic level, the Constitution created three co-equal branches of government, designed in part to prevent the rise of a despotic ruler in the office of the president. How much power the American people were meant to have in this structure is a matter of some debate, but over the course of our history, Congress (now with both chambers directly elected) has emerged as the branch most democratically accountable to the people. 

In the current circumstances in which the nation finds itself, however, democratically elected members of Congress do not necessarily see themselves as representing their constituents. Many of them operate primarily as agents of a political party or movement. This is most obvious in the Republican Party, where the entire party apparatus has been given over to President Trump. With a Republican majority in Congress, there is little if any separation between Congress and the executive branch. Congress is almost completely unwilling or incapable of functioning as an independent branch of government. This has allowed President Trump to assume authoritarian powers that were feared by the framers, as he routinely breaks the established laws, norms and traditions of democratic governance we developed over the past 250 years.

The president’s political supporters would no doubt argue that what we are witnessing is not a flaw or limitation of the current Constitution. It is simply the consequence of successful maximalist political action within the bounds of the current constitutional structure. Even assuming this to be true, the framers feared factions and never anticipated the kind of blind party loyalty that has become a feature of the Republican Congress in the Trump administration. That said, there were certainly going to be many future changes to American democracy that the framers could not plan for or did not expect.

Recognizing that they needed to provide for evolution and change, the framers developed a system for amending the Constitution, albeit one broadly seen as among the most difficult in the world to use. The Constitution has not been amended in almost 35 years. After a burst of several significant amendments during the Progressive Era, including one giving women the right to vote, there have been only seven amendments in the past 100 years. Today the United States has reached a point of political polarization that makes it very difficult to imagine the kind of broad national consensus necessary to pass a constitutional amendment of any kind, particularly one that might redress current imbalances of political power and encourage broader participation among citizens in the life of our democracy.

Consider, for example, the particularly American constitutional and democratic conundrum raised by the recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court determined that a majority-Black congressional district created under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Going forward, the decision will make it very difficult to use racial population data as a tool for creating voting districts in the South that give Black voters a meaningful opportunity to elect representatives of their choosing. Recognizing that there had been documented, sustained and systematic efforts to prevent Black people from voting based on their race, the V.R.A. was passed by Congress specifically to address racial discrimination. For the past 60 years, it has authorized the creation of majority-minority voting districts under very strict circumstances that group voters based on race or ethnicity so that their interests can be represented effectively in our political system.

The current conservative majority on the Supreme Court has been aggressive in promoting its belief that considering race for almost any reason is constitutionally suspect and that the Constitution is color blind. But the ongoing significance of race in the states covered by the V.R.A. was demonstrated immediately after the court’s decision was announced. Within days—and with blithe indifference to the chaos unleashed on the early voting that had already begun—Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and other Southern states began the process of dismantling majority-Black congressional districts that had been created under the V.R.A. Shortly after, a unanimous panel of three federal judges, two of whom were appointed by President Trump, ruled that Alabama’s newly revised map racially discriminated against Black voters and threw it out. Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court and won.

Supporters of the Callais decision have argued that these redistricting moves are political responses validated by earlier Supreme Court decisions that have approved political gerrymandering. The fact that overwhelming majorities of Black Americans vote for Democrats is about politics, not race, they say, and race is an inappropriate way to categorize voters. In their view, the end of racially drawn districts will encourage Black people to distribute their votes between the two major parties and will spur both parties to court Black voters more aggressively.

That vision of the future appears highly unlikely given the deep polarization of American politics. Extreme views and purity tests have disincentivized the parties from forging the internal compromises necessary to bring new constituencies into their coalitions. Despite modest gains with Black male voters by President Trump in the last election, the Republican Party and the MAGA movement have shown very little interest in Black Americans and the issues that typically concern them. On the contrary, MAGA has openly embraced nativism and white Christian nationalism. It therefore seems unlikely that a significant number of Black voters would find the Republican party an appropriate or welcoming place to seek political representation anytime soon. 

The current debate about the Voting Rights Act demonstrates how the Constitution has been interpreted to suit the preferred narrative of those currently in power. Racial discrimination still stains our commitment to democracy in the United States, and the V.R.A. is considered one of the crowning achievements of the Civil Rights Era. Its passage was the result of the rough and tumble legislative process of the (mostly) democratically elected Congress at the time; its core principles have been upheld by the courts for decades; and it has broadened political representation in this country to an extent not seen since Reconstruction. 

Is this a government meant to serve all its people, or must we acquiesce to the theoretical predilections and preferred interests of a privileged few? The V.R.A. was an imperfect tool designed for an imperfect country with a centuries-long history of race-based slavery and racial discrimination. As a means of including citizens whose views and voices had been excluded from democratic governance, it was a remarkable success, assuming we want a democracy that prioritizes membership and participation over entrenched power and privilege. 

Our Constitution has passed its sell-by date. In its current form, it cannot support the kind of democracy most of us want today. If we are open to aggressive measures that are in good faith—a constitutional convention, for instance—to revise, reform or rewrite it, then yes, I think the vision and principles of its preamble can endure and our democracy will thrive. But if we are unwilling to adapt it to support our evolving understandings of human dignity, democratic participation and the primacy of the rule of law, I don’t think it will.

Vincent D. Rougeau is president of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. He has served as the dean of Boston College Law School and president of the Association of American Law Schools. He was also the inaugural director of the Boston College Forum on Racial Justice in America.