Look. If you're going to write an amendment concerning something as morally fundamental as a ban on torture, you can't bog it down in half a dozen "Sections" and lump a laundry list of examples into each one. When James Madison authored the First Amendment, he didn't belabor the point with all sorts of examples of what kinds of laws might abridge speech or even what he meant by "speech", exactly--he just dashed off a single bad-ass sounding sentence, added in some extra commas (as was the style at the time), and had a sandwich.
It all makes sense when you realize that the literary parallel to the Bill of Rights is nothing less than the Ten Commandments. God knew if he wanted to get the point across it would have to be with an awesome-sounding bullet list--"I'm God! I'm the only God! Don't say my name! You can take Sundays off! And no killing!"--and that the mundane details could be safely left to the Talmud nerds. Madison followed suit, to satisfyingly dramatic effect--"Talk! Shoot! Fuck Redcoats, am I right? And no snoopin'!". See? It's wisdom*, distilled into Power-Point-sized chunks for easy consumption.
So, anyway, if we're not talking about some nerdy amendment like allowing an income tax, we'd better be making sure that it lives up to its rhetorical pedigree. That's why my version would look something like this:
Amendment XXVIII.There you go. All of the ticking time-bomb shit, all of the ambiguities about what counts as torture--those can all be sussed out by Supreme Court nerds. Indeed, sensibilities are bound to shift over time, and there's certainly nothing wrong with letting those emerge via Court decisions over the years. But this way, you're sending a clear message about where the United States stands on the issue of torture and human rights.
Congress shall make no law permitting the use of torture against any person.
*Er, wisdom minus the whole slavery-is-bad bit. Both lists seem to be okay with it.
