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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#201

Post by ETH_start »

crazygringo wrote: post #189
WalterBright wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Constitution is still the best one in the world. The 18th Amendment (Prohibition) is an example of what can go wrong with amendments.

Actually it's not. Constitution design is an academic field, a very niche area of political science, and nobody would ever implement anything like the US Constitution today. It would be like using ALGOL for a new project today instead of Python or Java. The US Constitution was very much a version 1.0 project, written before people even knew political parties would be a design constraint. Constitutions are on like ver…

You can't compare Constitutions to programming languages in terms of the prevailing consensus on their utility.

While the latter has a vast test bed of real world utilization that reveals PL efficacy, the former can only be evaluated from the standpoint of theory, with a heavy heap of ideology.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#202

Post by lupire »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #179
tptacek wrote: post #33

It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn. I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Con…

> but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted. I feel like the first amendment is one of the few bipartisan issues of the constitution, though. The only issue seems to stem from those who misinterpret it as some almighty protection against being abrasive. It's simply meant to say that the government can't punish you for your speech or other associ…

The 1st Amendment has always been widely hated, going back nearly to the very first year, ateast as far back as the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#203

Post by trelane »

crazygringo wrote: post #189
WalterBright wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Constitution is still the best one in the world. The 18th Amendment (Prohibition) is an example of what can go wrong with amendments.

Actually it's not. Constitution design is an academic field, a very niche area of political science, and nobody would ever implement anything like the US Constitution today. It would be like using ALGOL for a new project today instead of Python or Java. The US Constitution was very much a version 1.0 project, written before people even knew political parties would be a design constraint. Constitutions are on like ver…

Ah, interesting. How many have they tried experimentally?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#204

Post by lupire »

tptacek wrote: post #64
BitwiseFool wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted." I feel like the author is looking at using amendments as a way to implement legislation that is permanent. Our Federal constitution is fairly concise, whereas some…

It's another way in which the article doesn't cohere, because it seems clear that Lepore sees amendments as in part a way to settle national controversies (like birthright citizenship or the right to bear arms). But an amendable Constitution doesn't settle anything, as you point out. What it really does is sap political power from the Supreme Court, which is a reasonable goal for someone like Lepore to have right now…

Congress passing laws saps power from the Supreme Court, and is easier than Amending the Constitution.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#205

Post by ETH_start »

lupire wrote: post #200
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Could you imagine if it were easy to amend? There would be a thousand amendments where every party in power amends to undo the last party's amendments. It's the supreme law of the entire country. Amendments shouldn't come easy.

The issue is more that the lack of amendments proves that we are no longer a "United" States.

Exactly, the article should have arrived at the conclusion that the problem in the US right now is that party politics predominates over the pursuit of the national interest. Instead it arrives at a prescription that could potentially greatly worsen party politics.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#206

Post by ern »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #193
tptacek wrote: post #33

It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn. I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Con…

I agree. Could you imagine if it were easy to amend? There would be a thousand amendments where every party in power amends to undo the last party's amendments. It's the supreme law of the entire country. Amendments shouldn't come easy.

No less a jurist than Antonin Scalia (one of the most conservative and intellectually formidable Supreme Court justices, whatever your opinion of his positions) thought that the US Constitution was too hard to amend:

"Scalia said fewer than 2 percent of the population could prevent enactment of a constitutional amendment. “It ought to be hard, but not that hard" https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/how_scalia_and_ginsb...

The bizarre circus of Supreme Court nominees coyly pretending to be apolitical in a plainly partisan nomination process is another indicator that there's something wrong.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#207

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

WalterBright wrote: post #180
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2…

The answer is, it is a Republic, not a Democracy. It's set up to make it difficult for the majority to trample on the rights of the minority. More colorfully, having two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. It's still a good thing.

People keep saying this (the republic vs direct democracy part), and it literally doesn't make any sense, to the point that I have difficulty believing people aren't being deliberately obtuse.

Having people directly elect their representatives is still very much a republic and in no definition I've ever seen considered direct democracy. We're talking about people electing their representatives, not their laws.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#208

Post by PinesOfRome »

crazygringo wrote: post #189
WalterBright wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Constitution is still the best one in the world. The 18th Amendment (Prohibition) is an example of what can go wrong with amendments.

Actually it's not. Constitution design is an academic field, a very niche area of political science, and nobody would ever implement anything like the US Constitution today. It would be like using ALGOL for a new project today instead of Python or Java. The US Constitution was very much a version 1.0 project, written before people even knew political parties would be a design constraint. Constitutions are on like ver…

Elaborate on this. How do political parties affect the equation here, and what would the more modern approach be? Any texts you can recommend regarding this?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#209

Post by anon291 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46
johnthuss wrote: post #15

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…

> It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2…

It's a great thing because where you live matters. I have no idea what's going on in the wilds of Wyoming. Wyomingites do. If Californians were represented by population, these lands would be managed by people who do not live there. That is terrible.

IMO, the main thing wrong with us federalism is that the western states ought to be broken up

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#210

Post by lupire »

jdmichal wrote: post #185
nathanaldensr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This basic fact eludes the intelligentsia who all assume that federal power is The Way Things Are (or Should Be). They assume it's the default position, when in fact the Framers intended it to be a bare-bones fallback for only basic things like the national defense.

They found a nice workaround with federal taxation though. There's a lot of instances where the states technically have the power to pass different laws than what's federally blessed. However, they'll lose federal funding if they do. And the majority of the time, that's just not a good trade-off. So the federal government is essentially taxing the state's citizens, then giving some amount of it back to the states in…

That's because the SCOTUS is inherently Federal, and so is biased toward Federal power.
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