For the American states, this might well seem like the best of times.
Thanks to a vibrant national economy, the fiscal situation in most states
has seldom been better.  Tax revenues have outpaced estimates in many states, 
allowing them to cut taxes without reducing spending on popular programs, 
and several states boast budget surpluses.  In addition, the devolution of 
power from Washington has afforded the states new opportunities to innovate 
and to experiment.  Meanwhile, recent Supreme Court rulings on federalism, 
together with congressional enactments such as the Unfunded Mandates Bill of 
1996, have guaranteed to the states a measure of autonomy.  One can well 
understand, then, why Governor Cecil Underwood would proclaim to the West 
Virginia legislature that "I can't remember a time brimming so completely 
with optimism and opportunity."

	Yet if one surveys the challenges facing the American states as they embark
on the new millennium, one might well choose to temper that optimism.  
After all, the optimism about state prospects stems largely from the fact 
that a robust American economy has filled state coffers to overflowing.  
Obviously, one cannot expect the economic boom to last forever, although one 
suspects that there are politicians who are fervently praying that the boom 
continues at least until November.   When the economic good times end, as 
inevitably they will, will the states be able to generate the revenues 
necessary to meet their responsibilities?   This is not an idle question.  
Devolution has not only increased the states' autonomy but has also expanded 
their responsibilities, and meeting those responsibilities costs money.  
Moreover, the states may discover that their ability to generate revenue has 
diminished.  Traditionally, a major source of funding for state governments 
has been the sales tax, but the expansion of internet commerce is likely to 
reduce revenues from that source.  And there is no obvious new source of 
revenue, like gambling during the 1980s and 1990s, that states can look to as 
a substitute for funding via taxes.  Complicating the fiscal future of the 
states still further are the constitutional restrictions that have been 
imposed in recent decades in several states (California, Colorado, Nevada, 
and Massachusetts come to mind), restrictions that limit the authority of 
state legislatures to tax and/or spend.

	The challenges facing state governments at the dawn of the 21st century, 
of course, are not exclusively fiscal.  The devolution of policy-making 
responsibility from Washington, as well as the responsibilities that state 
governments have traditionally shouldered, means that the states must discover 
how to address new problems and must seek solutions for long-standing, 
intractable ones.  During the 1960s and 1970s, commentators frequently 
raised questions about state government capacity, about whether states had 
the ability to manage and implement programs to deal with pressing concerns.  
Despite notable reforms in state government, it is fair to say that those same 
questions remain today.

	Finally, state governments must address what might be called the D & D 
challenge, the twin specters of citizen disinterest and citizen dissatisfaction.  
Public interest in and involvement in state government is minimal.  The turnout 
of eligible voters in state elections was  abysmal; now, it is declining from 
that level. In 1998, for example, with congressional seats and important state 
races at issue, the national turnout was only 36%, just over 1/3 of the 
eligible electorate.  In states which hold their state elections in odd-numbered 
years, when there are no national races to excite interest, the figures are 
even more discouraging-in my own state of New Jersey in 1999, for example, only 
31% of eligible voters bothered to participate in electing the state legislature.  

	Even as state legislatures reduced taxes and funded programs in the late 1990s, 
presumably popular courses of action, poll data revealed a pervasive 
dissatisfaction and distrust of state government.  A national poll in 1999, 
for example, found that only 1/3 of respondents indicated "a great deal" or 
"quite a lot" of confidence in state government.  And when citizens have had 
the opportunity, they have expressed their distrust in measures designed to 
limit the tenure of state officeholders, to circumscribe their powers, and to 
transfer policymaking responsibilities to the people acting directly.  Thus, 
during the 1990s, voters in 21 states established term limits for state 
legislators, and in 5 states they placed such limits on executive branch 
officials as well.  Other states have amended their constitutions to authorize 
the recall of state elected officials-Minnesota in 1996 brought the number of 
states employing this device to 18.  Initiatives in three states have required 
a super-majority in the legislature to enact tax increases, initiatives in two 
others have tied increases in spending to the rate of inflation and to 
population increases, and a Colorado initiative has required voter approval 
for all new taxes.  Indeed, the proliferation of constitutional initiatives 
itself suggests a profound skepticism about whether the institutions of state 
government can be relied upon to enact good policy.

	It would be naive, of course, to suggest that all of the problems I have 
described are constitutional problems, or that they all are susceptible to a 
constitutional resolution.  Yet I think it would be equally naïve to assume 
that state constitutions are irrelevant to solving any of these problems. 
Simply put, state constitutions do matter.  They create the institutions of 
state government, and as the jargon of political science puts it, institutions 
influence outputs.  They  affect how well state governments can address policy 
concerns.  State constitutions also forge the links between state governments 
and the citizens of those states and, at their best, embody the aspirations of 
those citizens.  

	The central role played by state constitutions underscores the importance of 
the basic questions that we will be addressing over the next two days.  What 
is the state of state constitutions?  Do they need to be revised to deal 
with the problems I have identified and with other challenges facing state 
governments as they enter the 21st century?  If they do, how should they be 
changed to promote more effective and more responsive government?  And how 
can reformers overcome the obstacles that have blocked constitutional reform 
in the past? 

	I offer no pat answers to those questions-given the expertise of those 
participating in the conference, I plan on doing a lot of listening.  
But let me offer a few broad-brush observations about contemporary American 
state constitutions, keeping in mind always that, given their diversity, 
almost any statement made about state constitutions is bound to be true of 
some of them and not true of others.

	First, American state constitutions tend to be "old"-the average state 
constitution has been in operation for over a century.  Most current 
constitutions date from the late 19th century-only 12 states revised 
their constitutions during the 20th century, although 5 others did draft 
their initial constitutions within the last 100 years.  Of course, there is 
nothing intrinsically wrong with "old" constitutions--the Federal Constitution 
was drafted here in Philadelphia 213 years ago, and most of us have no desire 
to see it replaced.  Indeed, one might suggest that for constitutions, 
durability is a virtue, not a vice.  Yet, unlike the Federal Constitution, 
contemporary state constitutions do not continue in operation because of 
popular veneration for the document or for its drafters.  Indeed, state 
constitution-makers during the 19th century, when most of these constitutions 
were written, would have rejected outright such a deference to the past.  
They viewed constitution-making as a progressive enterprise, and they assumed 
that periodic revision of state constitutions was not only proper but necessary. 
And certainly the poll data mentioned earlier belie any notion that the "old" 
state constitutions have survived because of widespread popular satisfaction 
with the governments that they have created. 

	If a constitutional amendment indicates a defect in a constitution, then one 
can conclude that these older state constitutions-and the "younger" ones too, 
for that matter--have not survived because they have successfully solved the 
problems besetting the states.  Most state constitutions have been amended more 
than once for every year that they have been in operation, and the frequency of 
amendment actually rose as the 20th century drew to a close.  Regardless of the 
wisdom of particular amendments, there is simply something wrong with that 
picture.  If nothing else, the number of amendments over time has destroyed 
whatever initial coherence a state constitution might have had.  And piecemeal 
amendment may actually preclude the more encompassing review of the adequacy of 
a state constitution that would be possible in a constitutional convention.

	When one turns from process to substance, there is also cause for concern.  
I am not worried about state provisions dealing with ski trails in New York or 
highway routes in Minnesota-such provisions, while quaint and faintly comical, 
have no significant effect on the performance of state government.  But one can 
easily generate a whole litany of concerns.  Is a plural executive, such as 
exists in states that elect their secretary of state, their attorney general, 
and so on, conducive to effective government?  Do the procedural checks imposed 
on state legislatures promote deliberation and transparency, as their 
proponents insist, or do they merely impede the enactment of important 
legislation?  Do constitutional debt limits and constitutional requirements of 
balanced budgets promote fiscal responsibility, or do they merely preclude 
necessary flexibility in fiscal management?  Does the election of judges 
undermine judicial independence, or does it promote a necessary accountability?  
Does the inclusion of public policy provisions in state constitutions unduly 
hamper legislatures seeking to respond to changing problems?

	I could go on.  To many of you, I suspect, this list must sound quite familiar.  
It should.  It reflects the concerns that underlay the development of the Model 
State Constitution in the early years of the 20th century.  This in turn 
suggests two overarching questions that I believe will help focus our 
deliberations.  First, is the agenda of constitutional reform that dominated 
most of the 20th century, and is implicit in my set of questions, still 
pertinent for dealing with the problems confronting state governments in the 
early decades of the 21st century?  And second, even if it is, do the solutions 
proposed by 20th century reformers still make sense today?  One can note in 
passing that the reformers' prescriptions do almost nothing to address the 
D & D problems identified earlier.
 
	The very fact that I am reiterating the concerns of previous generations of 
reformers, of course, underscores a further point.  For the most part, these 
earlier reformers failed.   Otherwise, one would not see so many states 
operating under 19th century-or even 18th century--constitutions.  Moreover, 
most states that revised their constitutions during the 20th century introduced 
only limited changes. And when constitutional conventions proposed strongly 
reformist  constitutions, as in Maryland for example, they went down to 
ignominious defeat.  For whatever reasons, the constitutional reformers were 
unable to "sell" their vision of state government and state constitutions to 
the public.  Perhaps they were inept politicians.  Or perhaps they had the 
wrong message.  What exactly was the cause of their failure is worth 
considering as we seek to chart directions for constitutional reform in the 
21st century.

	And how will that reform come to pass?  Although states vary in the mechanisms 
they have instituted for constitutional amendment, they share the view that 
constitutional revision should come via a constitutional convention.  During 
the 19th century, such conventions were common-over the course of the century, 
the American states held 144 constitutional conventions.  In fact, in one  
decade, over half the existing states had conventions.   During that period, 
constitutional conventions were viewed as a mechanism for popular government, 
a means by which the people could outflank established governmental 
institutions and replace the ordinary politics of parochial advantage and 
corruption with a politics of the common good.   It is fair to say that that 
understanding of the constitutional convention largely disappeared during the 
20th century.  The convention instead came to be seen as distant from the 
general populace, another forum in which elite reformers and entrenched 
interests competed for political power, with neither much interested in popular 
perspectives or popular concerns.  Whatever the validity of that understanding 
of conventions, it had its effect.  The number of conventions declined 
precipitously over the course of the 20th century.  State electorates regularly 
voted against calling conventions, and on several occasions they rejected the 
constitutions submitted to them by conventions.  If constitutional reform is to 
proceed through constitutional revision, an initial step must be to ensure that 
the constitutional convention once again becomes a people's institution 
and-equally important-an institution that fairly represents all segments of 
the state's population. 

	Failing that, reform will have to occur piecemeal, through constitutional 
amendment, whether proposed by the legislature, by constitutional commissions, 
or by initiative.  There are certainly disadvantages with such a piecemeal 
approach-among them, the possibility of undermining constitutional coherence.  
Nevertheless, amendments can introduce significant reforms, as the successes 
of the recent constitutional commission in Florida illustrate.  And Florida 
is not an isolated example: within the past year, campaigns for constitutional 
reform have begun in Alabama, in Oklahoma, and in Texas.  Other states may 
follow suit.  Indeed, over the next decade, voters in 10 states will be given 
the opportunity to determine whether or not a constitutional convention should 
be called.  All this suggests that this conference's inquiry into the state of 
state constitutions is both timely and important.  I, for one, can't wait to 
get started.