It's small wonder that the EU's attempt at a unifying consitution has descended into squabbles between its members, each seeking to protect its civil and economic stakes. Nor is it shocking that some parties have even urged (as "The Economist" has reported) "an explanatory commentary, limiting the [EU] charter's impact on national legislatures, attached to the constitution."
My own suggestion might strike some as a bit paradoxical: The best formula for such a commentary might call for spartan ambiguity, rather than verbose specificity. Witness America's own Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Such vagueness sufficed to settle the squabbles, similar to those facing the EU's members, which arose between America's original 13 states. The Tenth Amendment ingeniously satisfied both anti-federalists (who understood "delegated" to mean "expressly delegated"), as well as federalists (who viewed the amendment as tautologous, hence harmless). The brief text's precise purport only emerged with subsequent case law governing civil rights and Roosevelt's New Deal.
True, some may say that hard cases make bad law. But to borrow a Churchillian turn-of-phrase, case law may indeed be the worst method of constitutional clarification---except for the other methods we've tried from time-to-time.
About the Author
Timothy Chambers' op-eds and letters to the editor have appeared in various magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ebony, The Economist, Elle, Interview, the Skeptical Enquirer, and Vogue. His op-eds have appeared in the Hartford Courant, the Korea Herald, and the Korea Times. He can be reached at wellwisher68@hotmail.com
It's small wonder that the EU's attempt at a unifying consitution has descended into squabbles between its members, each seeking to protect its civil and economic stakes. Nor is it shocking that some parties have even urged (as "The Economist" has reported) "an explanatory commentary, limiting the [EU] charter's impact on national legislatures, attached to the constitution." 
