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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#261

Post by pyuser583 »

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…

The v5 or v6 would be Canada and South Africa - which have widely praised (by legal scholars) Constitutions.

But neither are really great or terrible. Canada didn’t really change much, and South Africa hasn’t been doing great.

The “West German Basic Law” was widely condemned:

* it was unrealistic to have strong privacy protections for a nation filled with refugee camps and few private homes

* the protections for the family were meaningless when so few nuclear families survived (something like 70% of the country was female)

* the mandate to reunify was unrealistic and possibly undesirable

* there were no provisions for the victims of Nazi Germany

* it favored the establishment of strong, stable leaders - which brought back memories of Hitler

* many of the civil liberties - such as abolishing the death penalty - were just excuses to prevent punishment of war criminals (which was true)

* claiming the lands East of the Oder as part of Germany was unrealistic

Buy it turned out to be an extremely effective Constitution that lead to the transformation of Germany and its eventual reunification (mostly).

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#262

Post by tillinghast »

lupire wrote: post #224
johnnyanmac wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact is that our Constitution reduces voting rights for those that live in populous urban areas and gives outsized voting rights to those that live in rural/sparsely populated area yup, that was by intention. That's also exactly why the senate was erected; they didn't want smaller states to be ignored by campaigns that could ultimately just focus on enough electoral votes to win the election. >This rationale/com…

No, it was because the slave states didn't want to lose slavery in a Senate vote. If you think CA is too populous for it's people deserve an equal vote, CA should be 6 states. But the slavers fought that too (Missouri Compromise). State boundaries are legal constructs inherited from obsolete aristocracy, not meaningful cultural boundaries. It makes no sense to solve a hypothetical tyranny of large states by replacing…

"We the People" of? Of what?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#263

Post by nohaydeprobleme »

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?

This is a good question that motivated a feature-length article published in The Economist this summer (which I've also referenced elsewhere in this comment section) [1].

The article argues that newer versions of constitutions are often overly lengthy due to attempting to include too many laws within the constitution, which can cause problems. The article argues: "Overly long constitutions often create conflicts between articles that can only be resolved with further tampering. And “if everything is highest law, then nothing is highest law anymore,” points out Dr Versteeg. Omnibus amendments require voters to balance the merits and drawbacks of many changes at once, making it harder to generate consensus."

In brief, the article's view is that the inclusion of too many laws in more recently-written constitutions leads to greater incentives for constitutional rewrites as times and political views change, which is why the article favours shorter constitutions that guarantee fundamental rights, and are thus difficult to rewrite.

[1] (Paywalled, though I've included a summary above): https://www.economist.com/international/2022/08/25/dictators...

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#264

Post by mlindner »

UberFly wrote: post #253
m-p-3 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one way or another, the population will reach its breaking point, and the Constitution will change.

No, more like one of the broken parts will create their own Constitution.

The US tried that already in 1861, it didn't go well. Also you're advocating for the idea that Democracy is a bad idea here.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#265

Post by jakeogh »

joshuamorton wrote: post #217
nathanaldensr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution does not represent the People's will; it represents the States' will. Amendments are not passed by popular vote. The Constitution is not a human rights document; it is a document created specifically to allow the States to agree on certain baseline rights and expectations.

Yes, this is a bug, not a feature. A government that privileges certain arbitrary subdivisions over the citizenry is not great, and there's a reason that while many parts of the US constitution have been copied, that one hasn't.

Boundaries, states in this case, but it's a general principal, are exactly what give the people within them self-determination.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#266

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

lupire wrote: post #202
johnnyanmac wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>”The 1st Amendment has always been widely hated, going back nearly to the very first year”

This is the first time I’ve heard that the First Amendment was hated, much less widely hated, and that it has been so widely hated since the founding of the country. What are you basing this off of?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#267

Post by kcplate »

Arainach wrote: post #244
kcplate wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those countries on that list would you put forth as good examples of a stable political system? I counted five, and that’s being fairly generous since two of the five has had some political upheaval in the last 50 years.

I'd say that the election system for most of them inspires more confidence than the US at that point. At least they have the decency to train their vote-rigging poll watchers in private rather than in public. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/politics/michigan-gop-poll-wo...

There is not a single country on that list that I would prefer to live in over the US..mainly because of political stability. Not saying the US is perfect, but I’d say it’s damn sure more stable than virtually every other country on the list.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#268

Post by torstenvl »

jfengel wrote: post #72
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…

Our Federal constitution is fairly concise Concise to the point of vacuous. It says practically nothing. It describes only the barest outlines of government, and effectively all of the actual implementation has been a matter of legislation, judicial decisions, and tradition. Individual words are scrutinized as if they will somehow be unambiguous if we stare at them long enough, or bring in enough cherry-picked outsid…

It may appear that way, especially if someone doesn't make it their life's work. But although concise, it is rich in meaning.

You call out Article III, for example, so I'll focus on that. It doesn't say "we should have a Supreme Court and other courts Congress may establish." It says the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in them, and that judges shall be appointed. It isn't magisterial or clerical power. It clearly establishes the United States as a common law system. That's further reinforced by the use of the term jurisdiction — literally the power to say what the law is. It's clear that any and all courts established by Congress are "inferior" to the Supreme Court, which is a significant protection of judicial independence. It's also clear that Congress can't reduce their pay as retribution - ditto. And that's just the first section.

It's a much richer document than your previous comment gives it credit for.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#269

Post by pyuser583 »

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_…

Scalia said this a lot. I’ve read a number of interviews with he him, and he brings it up again and again.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#270

Post by kcplate »

Arainach wrote: post #247
midoridensha wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I just picked some representative examples out of that list. Check out the others: Brazil, Ecuador, Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela, Zimbabwe for a few. None of these are what I'd consider stable, prosperous, well-run nations.

France, Portugal, South Korea, Ukraine, Romania, Costa Rica, Taiwan.....it's almost like you're intentionally ignoring all of the presidencies that meet your criteria.

France is on a different list than the one that is anchor linked, as well as the other countries you mentioned other than Costa Rica.
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