"A new constitution should be more amendable. A needlessly confusing system of courts should be altered to produce an arrangement that would be simple, responsible, and less awkward"
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Pragmatism is doing most of the work here, and it’s a distinctly managerial kind: Edison isn’t praising lofty rights or national destiny so much as diagnosing a machine that’s hard to service. “More amendable” reads like a rebuke to constitutional reverence. It implies the existing framework has been treated as untouchable, and that this untouchability has become a liability in a modern, fast-changing economy and polity. Coming from a businessman (and, historically, a public figure in New Jersey politics), the line carries the sensibility of someone who expects systems to iterate: if the product fails, you redesign it.
The phrase “needlessly confusing” is the tell. Courts are always complex; “needlessly” suggests complexity that serves insiders rather than the public. The subtext is democratic but not romantic: confusion protects power, breeds delay, and blurs accountability. Edison’s desired virtues - “simple, responsible, and less awkward” - are corporate-organizational words smuggled into civic life. “Responsible” is especially pointed: he’s not just asking for clarity, but for a structure where someone can be held answerable when justice stalls or contradicts itself.
Contextually, this fits an early-to-mid 20th century American appetite for institutional streamlining: Progressive-era faith in expert redesign, New Deal-era expansion of government, and state-level pushes to modernize courts and administration. The rhetoric works because it refuses ideological fireworks. It frames constitutional and judicial reform as common-sense maintenance, casting opposition as defenders of bureaucratic clutter rather than guardians of principle.
The phrase “needlessly confusing” is the tell. Courts are always complex; “needlessly” suggests complexity that serves insiders rather than the public. The subtext is democratic but not romantic: confusion protects power, breeds delay, and blurs accountability. Edison’s desired virtues - “simple, responsible, and less awkward” - are corporate-organizational words smuggled into civic life. “Responsible” is especially pointed: he’s not just asking for clarity, but for a structure where someone can be held answerable when justice stalls or contradicts itself.
Contextually, this fits an early-to-mid 20th century American appetite for institutional streamlining: Progressive-era faith in expert redesign, New Deal-era expansion of government, and state-level pushes to modernize courts and administration. The rhetoric works because it refuses ideological fireworks. It frames constitutional and judicial reform as common-sense maintenance, casting opposition as defenders of bureaucratic clutter rather than guardians of principle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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