The Proposed New Association Constitution: A View from the Committee

Extract

The members of the Constitutional Revision Committee of the APSA were predominantly in agreement over the proposed text, though their reasons for supporting the text of the draft may have varied in particular instances. The authors of this article, in presenting their views in support of the draft, obviously claim to speak only for themselves. Hopefully, sufficient time and agenda space will be available at the business meeting during the 1971 Convention so that all the members of the Constitutional Revision Committee will feel encouraged to develop their particular arguments in behalf of the document in full detail.

In many respects the proposed new Constitution speaks for itself and needs no explanation. It seemed pointless and wasteful to us, for example, to specify the cost of annual dues as was done in the original Constitution. A Constitutional amendment was necessary, pursuant to the original document, each time the dues structure had to be altered. It is more consonant with the nature of a Constitution as a general framework of governance to leave such detailed items for careful deliberation by the assembly rather than to freeze them into the Constitution.