How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
bunkhistory.org
How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
1–10 of 111 posts
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#2Unfortunately, pretty much all of the BoR is regularly under attack. Those rights have to be constantly reaffirmed.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#3[deleted]
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#4This article is critical of the "cult" of the bill of rights. But look at China the other day and how their constitution was changed on a whim. Look at Russia which has Putin despite of a fairly modern and standard constitution.
Constitutions and laws are mere pieces of paper until the society within which they live endow them with sacred status. Without the "cult" and the moral indignation at violations surely civil liberties would erode at a much faster rate. As another comment says "Unfortunately, pretty much all of the BoR is regularly under attack." If the BoR didn't have the same nearly religious status one of those attacks would have succeeded by now.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#5Unfortunately, pretty much all of the BoR is regularly under attack. Those rights have to be constantly reaffirmed.
The Supreme Court loves to ignore the ninth. Somehow the fourth amendment is about convenience now? If we aren't detained or delayed, the government can copy, search, and scan anything they want. It appears the third now too is gone and the government can do what it wants on your land without permission or compensation.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#6Reading the Soviet Bill of Rights is pretty instructive because it'll show you how much such a thing is worth on its own.
Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from unlawful entry or search); privacy of all correspondence (including phone conversations); right to challenge actions of government officials and bodies in court; right to a job; work week limited to 40 hours; free medical care; welfare payments in old age, sickness, or disability; free housing; free education; academic freedom for scientists.
It's a very good list, and what I listed above isn't even half of it [1]. Precisely none of those were actually respected by the government. Having a Bill of Rights is great, but having a tradition of limited government, checks and balances, and rule of law is what gives those guarantees any weight.
[1] https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#7I am no American, but I think Americans are wise to revere their Bill of Rights partly because it is a reasonably good model for rights that everyone should have but also because Americans have lived for a long time with those particular and have made them mostly work. And as the article makes clear, the Bill of Rights didn't really just happen in 1789, it has evolved and (mostly) improved over 200+ years.
And that's a good reason to be skeptical of worries about "fetshising" it and dreams of how you could "remake the legal and political world". Big changes happened after the Revolution and the Civil War, how could they not? But evolution has happened at at all other times.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#8Reading the Soviet Bill of Rights is pretty instructive because it'll show you how much such a thing is worth on its own. Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from un…
Note that the rights in the Soviet Constitution have an important explicit limitation in Article 39: “Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens.”
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#9This article is critical of the "cult" of the bill of rights. But look at China the other day and how their constitution was changed on a whim. Look at Russia which has Putin despite of a fairly modern and standard constitution. Constitutions and laws are mere pieces of paper until the society within which they live endow them with sacred status. Without the "cult" and the moral indignation at violations surely civil…
Yes, people get these things arse-backwards. They notice that laws are just pieces of paper, and think that's a reason to disrespect them. But so long as the law is worth having, the fact that it is a mere defenceless piece of paper is the very reason while people have a duty to act them out in the real world.
And what's worst is that the "it's only a piece of paper" argument seems to be trotted out mostly against laws, such as constitutions, which underpin important, time-tested rights. No one is so eager to point out that the latest act granting power to this-or-that official is also just a piece of paper.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#10Unfortunately, pretty much all of the BoR is regularly under attack. Those rights have to be constantly reaffirmed.
The Supreme Court loves to ignore the ninth. Somehow the fourth amendment is about convenience now? If we aren't detained or delayed, the government can copy, search, and scan anything they want. It appears the third now too is gone and the government can do what it wants on your land without permission or compensation.
It appears the third now too is gone and the government can do what it wants on your land without permission or compensation.
I'm pretty sure that the United States government has not been forcing anyone to house soldiers.
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amen...