Gödel's Loophole

Maybe it's obvious to you; to me it's obvious the other way. Perhaps, when penning their supposed bulwark against dictatorship, they could afford to spend a few more drops of ink?

If the authors of such entrenched clauses really meant it the way you imply, they are doubly idiots, first for thinking that such legal technicalities would help prevent the slide into dictatorships, and then for failing to even do that and leave a loophole. I don't think they are idiots and they realized such an attempt would be futile and counterproductive. And focused their efforts elsewhere, to build a proper system with checks and balances so power would not be concentrated.

> The idea that the eternity clause was deliberately made toothless in case we actually do want to abolish human rights, democracy and rule of law again is frankly absurd.

No dictator would bother with amending such toothless abstract parts anyway. They would simply claim they are the greatest champion of human rights, and that their abuses are actually not abuses at all. The parts that are worth changing are concrete, technical details; like how are the judges that decide whether those are abuses are appointed. And those parts that the dictator might want to modify, may also legitimately need to be modified in the future, so all constitutions leave the door open to that change, yes.

> That constitutional amendment would simply be unconstitutional and thus invalid. Law is not code. If you violate its intent, you violate it.

Of course the prospective dictator would violate the constitution's intent, that's the point. Newly appointed judges would disagree with you about the amendment's constitutionality, though. As would the populace, who would just see unelected judges violating letter of the law to stop the people's will and protect the status quo.

Law is not code, it's what people in power interpret it to be. If a person or group manages to concentrate the power in practice, no legal technicalities help. I live in a country that recently went through that change; all the human rights, freedom of speech, rule of law clauses are there, all the supposed ostensible checks and balances are there, none of it is of any help. You can think in your head that it's not actually constitutional all you like, it's just that the judges, prosecutors, army, police, the censored media and most of the populace would disagree.

> As would the populace, who would just see unelected judges violating letter of the law to stop the people's will and protect the status quo.

Nope. It would see the most trusted state organ protecting the Basic Law. Which I've capitalized not because I can't spell but because it culturally has a somewhat similar status to the US Constitution in the USA.

That is to say that our understanding of the rules of the game, our norms, are not created at birth but rather accumulated as we experience the external world. So the acts of the lawyer and the judge matters not just for the parties involved in the case, but also to all that might hear of it. Therefore their impact on the whole of society is not to be measured merely by the number of legal entities they adjudicate between, but rather by the size of the total audience.

Though I will grant that the lion share of the moral choices we make have pretty straightforward answers (should I shove this dude onto the tracks for talking loudly about bitcoins while we wait for the subway? No, I'll just rant on twitter), and our norm setting systems rarely have to get involved for us to make those choices in line with the rest of society.

[...]

>"Since the exact nature of Gödel's Loophole has never been published, what it is, precisely, is not known."

Gödel was a brilliant, brilliant Mathematician.

There is no doubt, no question about that!

In fact, he's one of my personal "Mathematical Heros". In the same league as Ramanujan, Gauss, Euler, Newton, etc.

But, while he was all of this, he was also "rank amateur" in terms of finding contradictions in what is commonly called "The Law" (even though this article might have you believe otherwise).

Wow, he found one contradiction in the Law!

And of course, they don't tell you what it was exactly, leaving you guessing, leaving you wanting to know more -- a common trick used by Hollywood (and book authors) for getting and keeping the audience's attention!

One has only to study the Law, or what is commonly called "The Law" -- for a few years, with the mind of a Logician or Computer Programmer -- to discover many, and I mean, many, contradictions...

Here's a "fun one" to "whet your whistle":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause

>"The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.[1][2][3]

[...]

>"Text

The Equal Protection Clause is located at the end of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the

equal protection of the laws.

Now, compare this equal protection of the laws, with the extremely unequal way that Covid-19 lockdown laws were implemented, State to State, in the United States:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns#United_Stat...

>"Stay-at-home orders in the United States have come from several states and a large number of local jurisdictions, sometimes leading to conflicts between different levels of government and a patchwork of inconsistent dates and rules.[610][611][612]"

Sometimes leading to conflicts, Wikipedia?

?

Try more like ALL OF THE TIME!

That is all of them -- are in conflict, contradiction, with the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.

You see, for a State's Laws to be valid under the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution, it's an all-or-nothing deal.

That's because all Laws are like half-filled glasses of water; that is, they have a filled part, and they have an unfilled part.

If half of a Law is what protects people, it's like the filled part of the glass of water.

The other half of a Law is what encroaches on other people's freedoms and liberties; it's like the unfilled part of the glass of water.

If the Laws which protect people (and simultaneously encroach on other peoples freedoms and liberties) are not exactly equal, in each and every State, all of the time, then this would not be unlike each State having its own glass of water -- that was filled to a different level -- than each of the other States...

In other words,

no longer are individuals in similar situations -- treated equally by the law.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution -- has been violated -- by these asymmetric, contradictory "Laws".

They are therefore, at least according to the Constitution, at least according to the Equal Protection Clause -- fully and thoroughly Unconstitutional (or contradictory, phrased another way) -- yet that hasn't seemed to have been much of an impediment to the groups and parties that implemented them, nor does it seem to be an aspect of things that was discussed or talked about much in the mass media...

But, long story short -- there are many contradictions in Law -- if one but studies the subject matter with the mind of a Mathematician, Logician, or Computer Programmer...