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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#321

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #316
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how it normally works, and I suspect you know that.

What will most likely happen is that the prices of pork will go up in Cali to accommodate for their laws and stay the same everywhere else. Regulation simply equals increased prices which is essentially a tax on the middle class and poor. Whatever was regulated will become a luxury. The rich will have it but the middle class and poor will not. See car prices, gas prices, food prices, liquor licenses, etc. Anything th…

> What will most likely happen is that the prices of pork will go up in Cali

That assumes:

* either pork production for CA takes place only inside CA or in other states they have two levels of pork production

* if the latter, this further requires that pork producers are happy maintaining two levels of production

* it also requires that no or few other states follow CA lead on requirements

> Regulation simply equals increased prices

Regulation is often (not always, but often) about bring externalities into the actual cost. So the full picture of the result of regulation needs to include:

* what were the externalities now being priced?

* where was the cost of the externalities previously experienced (e.g. poor communities dealing with runoff and waste from pork production)

* what was the full cost of the externalities before regulation bought some of them into the actual price?

* what are the remaining externalities after the regulation

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#322

Post by stale2002 »

m-p-3 wrote: post #228
cm2187 wrote: post #222

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibust…

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

If there is a strong enough popular support for taking more extreme actions, then there should be strong enough support to change the constitution the normal way.

For people who want the constitution changed, thats the dilemma they have to deal with. If they don't have enough support to do it the regular way, then maybe the more silly and extreme solutions aren't justified either.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#323

Post by meowkit »

kepler1 wrote: post #305
hedora wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population shifts mean an ever-shrinking minority of the population can block changes to the constitution. It’s barely even double digits at this point. Constitutional amendments were supposed to be easier than right to rebellion. That’s not really the case any more. At the same time, the supreme court is just ignoring the law, over the objections of 66-75% of the population (depending on the ruling). These are dark…

Quoted post unavailable.

Consensus Failure is the issue that underlies all your listed examples, and many more important ones.

Gridlock, over an >extended< period of time, indicates there is a problem. Its like an engine seizing.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#324

Post by stale2002 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #216
WalterBright wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bill of Rights is particularly brilliant in its conciseness. A lawyer once said that "show me a contract that's one page, and I won't be able to break it. Show me one 20 pages long, and I'll break it."

So, by your standard, the Bill of Rights can’t be “broken” by a lawyer, that is, they can’t get a court to apply it in something other than the intended manner. But virtually every significant phrase in the Bill of Rights has been applied in multiple different ways by different courts over the years, so clearly lawyers have had no trouble breaking it.

> so clearly lawyers have had no trouble breaking it.

You are missing the point. The point is comparing it to a hypothetical constitution that is 20 pages long, instead of 1 page long.

So, the 20 page long constitution, is probably easier to break, despite you misleading focus, on the irrelevant point, of the exact way the statement was phrased.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#325

Post by pasquinelli »

cm2187 wrote: post #222

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibust…

> If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibuster, presidential veto, high threshold of consensus for changing the constitution), as it should.

which is why prohabition never happened.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#326

Post by nyokodo »

hedora wrote: post #275
cm2187 wrote: post #222

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibust…

Population shifts mean an ever-shrinking minority of the population can block changes to the constitution. It’s barely even double digits at this point. Constitutional amendments were supposed to be easier than right to rebellion. That’s not really the case any more. At the same time, the supreme court is just ignoring the law, over the objections of 66-75% of the population (depending on the ruling). These are dark…

> These are dark times for US democracy

The US system has little d democratic aspects but it is not a democracy. It was intentionally setup to protect the minority from the majority in critical respects like constitutional amendments. Also, population shifts are ongoing and the coastal blue populations are the most rapidly aging in the country and the increasingly red US born Hispanic populations are the most rapidly growing. The future may contain some surprises.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#327

Post by kepler1 »

I wish people (of both sides) who declare "the system is broken" etc would seriously ask themselves, is it because your particular issue didn't go your way? How would we run a stable country if that were the principle to follow?

There was the line "it may backfire on you sooner than you thought" and I think there's some good caution in that statement. Take your own argument out of the picture -- would you be happy for the principle by which you're suggesting we operate be on the other foot and the majority be in the hands of your opponent?

I come to think that democracy is, more than anything, learning how to lose gracefully and without a revolution. So many people now seem to believe, if I lose, it must be broken and deserves a revolution. On both sides.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#328

Post by torstenvl »

jonnybgood wrote: post #310
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A conspiracy theory is, by definition, a secret. That the government routinely ignores the Constitution isn't a conspiracy, just a sad fact. How many wars have we been in over the last 70 years? Vietnam? Korea? Iraq? Afghanistan? Just to name a very few. Read Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. How many times has the Congress voted to go to war? Is this just a conspiracy, or another example of our government's d…

Legally speaking, what is a war? Can an event look like a war, but is not a war? What are the thresholds for calling an event a war? Is every event involving military action a war?

Congratulations, you just summed up about 30% of Command and Staff College. /s

Professionally, we discuss a continuum of armed conflict, ranging from competition (at the "infrared" end of the spectrum) through limited contingency operations, small wars, hybrid threats, etc. to total war.

The Constitution has built into it certain assumptions about the world. Many of them either hold true or can be legally held true (e.g., there are inherent rights with inherent contours, such as for speech or keeping and bearing arms, that can be determined with historical analysis).

Many cannot hold, and become vestigial and almost meaningless (e.g., a $20 threshold for jury trials in civil cases).

Lastly, many cannot hold... and so the applicability of the provisions they implicate become open questions. It simply isn't the case that only nation-states can engage in armed conflict, or that they always make formal declarations of it (though I'd argue the AUMFs qualify for Constitutional purposes), or that all armed conflict will be at the level of total war.

The substance of the power to declare war is to ensure the President cannot act unilaterally to call up Reservists or engage in conflict; Congress governs. I think that substance continues to be met, given the weave of the statutory scheme (Title 10, Subtitle E; contingency operation appropriations by Congress; AUMFs; etc.).

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#329

Post by pasquinelli »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #319
bitwize wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name the fucking enemy. Starts with a 'C' and ends in 'apitalism'. Read Richard Wolff's Democracy at Work . This is the way.

I fully agree with lettergram and disagree with naming capitalism as an 'enemy'. How do you think you're going to reduce poverty and create wealth without capitalism?

the ussr and china both developed from feudalism without capitalism and lifted a huge number of people out of poverty. not advocating their system, (not not-advocating either), but they are counter examples.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#330

Post by theluketaylor »

pyuser583 wrote: post #261
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…

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…

As a Canadian I'd be surprised to learn our constitution was considered top notch by legal scholars.

The amendment process is very onerous. 7/10 provinces haven't ever really agreed on the colour of the sky, let alone something as important as new constitutional rules. It took some very special backroom wrangling to pass it in the first place and I don't see a path to amending it during my lifetime. Meech Lake came close and very nearly broke the country.

The notwithstanding clause was necessary to get it passed at all, but really takes some of the teeth out of the charter of rights and freedoms. When parties hold majority control of the House of Commons or a provincial legislature a lot of what keeps their power in check is mostly norms it turns out. One of the few actual laws that would really impede them is the charter, but portions of it can be ignored.

Overall I'm very happy we have the 1982 Constitution Act, but I certainly wouldn't offer it up as a blueprint if someone came asking for assistance in drafting a constitution. The Charter itself as a portion of the larger constitution (minus the notwithstanding clause) is a very special piece of law that deserves some recognition internationally, but as a whole it wasn't even 10 years before the real issues were exposed with the whole document.

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