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Let me run three words past you: symposium, law, and constitution.

Intrigued? -- At first I wasn't either.

But The Charleston Regional Business Journal's piece on how South Carolina's constitution "was meant to keep liquor out and black men down" is a surprisingly great offshoot of the recent "State Constitutional Reform in the New South" panel discussion at the Charleston School of Law.

An excerpt:
Though the 1895 document has been amended several times over the past 100-plus years -- changes from superseding federal law regarding poll taxes, literacy tests and reapportionment of political districts, for example -- a lot of the remaining articles were designed to keep the governor’s office weaker than the Legislature.

It gives a healthy perspective on the history of our state, how far we've come, and why Gov. Mark Sanford has so much trouble pushing things through.

Also of note is the sidebar of "changes proposed by the panel to reform the state’s balance of power."

Go read it.

And, if you want to get all geeky, you can go read the whole constitution online.