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A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

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Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#31

Post by Salgat »

jawns wrote: post #2

There have been only two amendments to the U.S. Constitution over the past 50+ years (one of which is the subject of this story). Why? Partly because the Supreme Court has been very willing to discover hidden rights within the existing amendments, decreasing the need for states to go through the very arduous process of getting a new amendment over the finish line. That might seem like a fine way to handle things ...…

This is why the Constitution is called a living document. It's malleable enough in its interpretation to remain relevant even after 2 centuries. Take away that and the constitution would no longer work for our modern society.

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#32

Post by escape_goat »

_-david-_ wrote: post #22
rcollyer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the 9th amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Essentially, the bill of rights was not intended to be exhaustive, nor could it be.

The problem is more the expansion of the government beyond what the Constitution allows not the expansion of the rights of people.

The problem is that on an individual, person to person basis, people like me owe people like you a respectful hearing of what you think America is and how you think it should be and understand - this is the important thing - how you got there before telling you that it never was and why it should never be. And just flip that to whichever one of us has the facts on their side. But we don't have those conversations. We only relate to each other insofar as we signal our political affiliations.

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#33

Post by Redoubts »

tedivm wrote: post #17
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the 14th Amendment really written in such a way that you can justify just about anything with it? I swear most SCOTUS landmark cases end up being about the 14th. Especially those considered “legislating from the bench”.

The 14th amendment is pretty open when it comes to granting freedom and not allowing discrimination. > 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.

And the weird part is the courts wrote out "shall [not] abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" but then wrote in "[substantive] due process of law" when they realized they stuffed up.

But the whole thing should have been scrapped after the civil war anyways. So much of the document, and the drawing up of states themselves, was done to balance slave-power -- something remarkably unimportant after 1865.

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#34

Post by [deleted] »

ByteJockey wrote: post #8
jessaustin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Supreme Court has been making shit up since 1857 at the latest. They are likely to continue to make shit up for several years after the Union dissolves.

1803 at least. They made up their own right to strike down laws (Marbury v. Madison). Admittedly, I'm not sure what a supreme court does if they can't do that, but it's kinda funny that they bootstrapped it themselves.

[deleted]

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#35

Post by exhaze »

hvdijk wrote: post #14
ohazi wrote: post #4

Catch-22: After he got the amendment ratified, there's a strong argument that the paper probably should have been given a higher grade. But had he been given that higher grade in the first place, he probably wouldn't have gone through the effort to ratify the amendment. You could argue that the paper did deserve the initial C grade, because that's what it took to get him angry enough to go and get the amendment ratif…

Poor grades are supposed to be for poor work. What you're talking about is intentionally giving good students bad grades for good work just to piss them off, hoping that something good comes out of pissing them off. That's not what grades are for.

This is literally not at all what happened.

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#36

Post by voidfunc »

sigzero wrote: post #28
fallingknife wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting the states make their own decisions on issues not addressed by the constitution is a perfectly viable solution. Not sure why that would be particularly difficult.

That is what was supposed to happen. The Federal level has way too much power today.

Yes, unfortunately "states rights" has become a rallying cry for racism and hatred, but the original framing of this country is that the state's are basically supposed to be much stronger than the Federal government.

I don't really know whether we can unwind the federal governments grasp on things without basically destabilizing the whole thing though at this point (and admittedly, I'm not sure the majority would want to).

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#37

Post by tcj_phx »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #5
dimitrios1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discover hidden rights is quite the euphemism for legislating from the bench. But credit is due for the correct answer, which is returning the balance back to the legislative branch.

Is the 14th Amendment really written in such a way that you can justify just about anything with it? I swear most SCOTUS landmark cases end up being about the 14th. Especially those considered “legislating from the bench”.

> Is the 14th Amendment really written in such a way that you can justify just about anything with it?

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution are known as the Reconstruction amendments. They were passed in the aftermath of the Civil War to fix the fundamental problems in the 1792 constitution.

Reconstruction Amendments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Amendments

The Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10) had been held to only constrain the powers of the federal government.

The 11th Amendment had to do with citizens of one state suing another state. The 12th Amendment had to do with the details of electing a president and vice president, and dealt with the problem of the elected president and vice president being opponents of each other (imagine Hillary Clinton being Trump's vice president, and Trump being Biden's vice President).

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. But it wasn't enough to say 'no slavery', as the freed slaves found they were still second-class citizens.

The 14th amendment said that citizens of the states are also citizens of the United States, and thereby they have all the rights accorded in the Bill of Rights, and required "equal protection of the laws". Section 1 is the origin of this branch of rights:

> Section 1. 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.

The Institute for Justice has some great podcasts about this period of history: https://ij.org/center-for-judicial-engagement/sc/14th-at-150...

Ep 1 - Before the Fourteenth: John Rock and the Birth of Birthright Citizenship - https://soundcloud.com/bound-by-oath/before-the-fourteenth

My efforts in the federal courts on behalf of my friend wouldn't be possible without the 14th amendment. (Summary: After the state supreme court shot me down, I found an attorney who was oddly familiar with my state court habeas corpus petitions and appeals. I said, "I don't even know that I can petition for habeas corpus on behalf of my friend." The attorney replied, "It's fully within your rights to petition for habeas on behalf of your friend, and the statutes are clear that you can. But you're dealing with a rural judge who will never rule against the community's non-profit mental health service provider." Me: 'Oh.' [I got screwed by the state judiciary.] Then the attorney said he couldn't help me, on account of his having already consulted for the person I was suing.)

Federal judges are supposed to be more insulated from local politics because they have lifetime appointments, and are thereby trusted to make politically-inconvenient decisions. In theory. In practice I think they have too much drudgery ("hard menial or dull work.") putting drug mules in federal prison to deal with fundamental mistakes in our treatment of the mentally ill. My district court judge passed the buck up to the court of appeals, who didn't want to deal with me either. I'm going to get a favorable ruling on my current appeal, I hope...

[edit: clarity]

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#38

Post by exhaze »

paxys wrote: post #20
ohazi wrote: post #4

Catch-22: After he got the amendment ratified, there's a strong argument that the paper probably should have been given a higher grade. But had he been given that higher grade in the first place, he probably wouldn't have gone through the effort to ratify the amendment. You could argue that the paper did deserve the initial C grade, because that's what it took to get him angry enough to go and get the amendment ratif…

Maybe the paper did deserve a C when it was handed in. Maybe it was poorly written, too short, too long, irrelevant to the topic at hand or just about anything else.

Maybe it's better to just spend 5 minutes looking into that question instead of coming up with random reasons.

The paper was originally graded by a TA who gave the "C" grade. Watson appealed the grade to the professor. The professor reviewed it and upheld the "C" grade, stating that he had not sufficiently convinced her that the amendment was still alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th...

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#39

Post by deelowe »

sigzero wrote: post #28
fallingknife wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting the states make their own decisions on issues not addressed by the constitution is a perfectly viable solution. Not sure why that would be particularly difficult.

That is what was supposed to happen. The Federal level has way too much power today.

The states really screwed this up when certain ones decided their love for cotton and hatred for brown people was more important than their sovereignty.

Re: A bad grade that changed the U.S. constitution (2017)

#40

Post by voidfunc »

ori_b wrote: post #21
resoluteteeth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If interpreted strictly, the constitution is really not suitable for operating a modern government (e.g. if you interpret the list of powers given to the federal government narrowly) so the supreme court essentially has no choice but to make stuff up. Obviously once they start doing that there's no real way to control what they are able to modify, but the only real way to fix it would be to completely scrap the curre…

> so the supreme court essentially has no choice but to make stuff up. Or the constitution can be amended.

This was Scalia's position basically.. he always held that there is a process for changing the Constitution.
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