The United States’ Unamendable Constitution • Hacker News Board

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#231

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:43 AM UTC

ern wrote: post #206

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.

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_…

The system really should be balanced such that each President gets one nomination per term.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#232

Post by lupire » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

tastyfreeze wrote: post #81

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…

Senators were meant to represent each state's government not the people directly. The Senate, by being once removed from the people, was supposed to take a longer more measured view on issues. The 17th Amendment[1] broke that and made senators elected by the people. The people have the House. The House has also been broken over time. In 1929 the House was capped at 435 members. Since then the number of people that a…

Why should the votes on the US be apportioned based on boundaries largely chosen by the English aristocracy of the 17th Century?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#233

Post by HWR_14 » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #167

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's have fifty vibrant laboratories of democracy. They'll need to stop trading with each other, then. cf. current CA legislation that will make it hard/impossible for other states to sell pork in CA that was not raised in accordance with CA law. Now, I happen to agree with the CA legislation, and would love it to cause a change in pork rearing nationwide. But you have to see the writing on the wall: with the leve…

Or people just don't trade with California and California doesn't have any pork.

> Or people just don't trade with California and California doesn't have any pork.

That's not how it works in the real world. See how California sets the entire US auto policy.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#234

Post by Rexxar » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

ralph84 wrote: post #221

crazygringo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the newer versions are better why do they end up being so short-lived?

If we continue the programming language metaphor: the same reason that nobody want to change the Cobol program on the old mainframe but is ready to rewrite more recent projects.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#235

Post by lupire » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:47 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #199

WalterBright wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's set up to make it difficult for the majority to trample on the rights of the minority Two words: Jim Crow

In context, he meant the rights of the minority that was 18th Century slave owners.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#236

Post by 627467 » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:47 AM UTC

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…

Why is it odd that in a federalized country 1 person is not necessarily 1 vote? Look at the UN general assembly: votes of island nations with few thousand people are worth the same as another nation with 1B people.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#237

Post by kritiko » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:47 AM UTC

lupire wrote: post #204

tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Supreme Court can then strike down those laws via judicial review, a power not enumerated in the constitution.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#238

Post by jquery » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:48 AM UTC

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…

The biggest strike against states rights in recent memory was the removal of the SALT deduction, one of the strongest protectors of state power. Now states with higher tax burdens are much less competitive, because the citizens of that state don’t benefit nearly as much for what they pay.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#239

Post by jdkee » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:49 AM UTC

A commentator on a Federalist Society conference this evening mentioned this project:

https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/special-projects/...

Interesting to read the varying contentions made by the respective groups on how to change the existing U.S. constitutional structure.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#240

Post by lupire » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

johnthuss wrote: post #65

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…

Clearly Republicans have benefited greatly from the electoral college lately. Whether that is good or bad depends on your political leaning. As a centrist I appreciate that the USA California. I don’t know that it is possible to judge this issue in an unbiased way.

Why do you appreciate that the US = the rural parts? That is the current alternative to "California".

Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the right wing, was governor of California.