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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

newyorker.com

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#571

Post by torstenvl »

candiddevmike wrote: post #542
torstenvl wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

It never grants them the ability to nullify laws via judicial review. That is a power they invented themselves.

Yes, it does. I think I was pretty clear about that. Help me understand where you're confused?

Is it that you don't see the linkage between the text of Article III and Marbury's famous line, "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is"? Because jurisdictio literally means "to say what the law is"

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#572

Post by amusedcyclist »

WalterBright wrote: post #174
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…

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.

Do you have any reason for that claim ? To an outsider, The US is mostly a supersized version of Canada or Australia. A lot of its current success depends on - its geographic location and strong connection to the early core of Industrialization in NW Europe - WW2 , which was a boon to American industry and simultaneously wrecked large parts of Europe

Now these are all very successful societies relative to most of the world but imo its pretty hard to argue that the US is special.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#573

Post by dsfyu404ed »

WalterBright wrote: post #177
jfengel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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."

This lawyer must not have been aware of the marvelous legal doctrines of mental gymnastics and motivated reasoning that often get applied to such phrases as "persons and effects" or "shall not be infringed". And let us not forget the definition tricks that get played with words like "search" and "speech".

edit: Sarcasm should be obvious. Point is if enough key parties want to ignore the law it gets ignored and upheld.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#574

Post by mynameishere »

gen220 wrote: post #158

In the US, we used to amend constitutions fairly regularly (at the Federal, State levels, but I’m most familiar with Federal and New York), especially through WWII. With a few exceptions (the prohibition is the biggest one that springs to mind), the trend line has generally been progressive. We stopped making meaningful changes around the 1960s, read into that what we may. Regardless, our governmental institutions ha…

It was progressives who outlawed booze. Don't retcon that word to mean "whatever I approve of today."

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#575

Post by jjtheblunt »

thenewthotness wrote: post #468
jjtheblunt wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A conspiracy theory is, by definition, a secret. conspiracy just means (Latin etymology) breathing together, i.e., being coherent...there's nothing about secret in the general case.

I think the implication is a bit more literal. When you conspire with someone you communicate secretly with them in order to plot and coordinate your actions. You do this by being in very close proximity to them and whispering, so close that you are sharing breath i.e. breathing together.

investors conspire in public to take over voting power, for instance, and do so in public to attract others

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#576

Post by naasking »

TeeMassive wrote: post #339
pasquinelli wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Crime virtually disappeared after Prohibition was passed until the apparition of organized crime. At the time (and still to this day) alcohol and drugs made and destroyed empires. The Dutch Empire was based on Gin. The British Empire on Opium and Rhum. Russia on Vodka. France had Bourbon.

> Crime virtually disappeared after Prohibition was passed until the apparition of organized crime.

I think you mean, that nearly everyone became a criminal overnight when Prohibition was passed, because they didn't just stop drinking.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#577

Post by dbsmith83 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #538
WalterBright wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BoR has been under continuous and relentless assault for well over two centuries. It is battered and bloodied, but has held up surprisingly well.

The recent abortion ruling disagrees with you. Same with the Patriot Act.

> The recent abortion ruling disagrees with you.

How?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#578

Post by amanaplanacanal »

randcraw wrote: post #39
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…

This likely boils down to how each party feels about the second amendment.

It seems to me the problems with the second amendment are twofold:

1. It was written under the assumption that there would be no standing army, so the citizen militia would be the backbone of the defense of the nation. But that isn’t where we are today, unfortunately.

2. A large part of the US seems to believe that getting rid of guns would make the US less violent. I suspect they are completely wrong about that. Our National myth is about using violence to successfully solve problems, from the original revolution through our successes in several wars.

So we are stuck with an extremely divisive issue which really has no impact on anything real.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#579

Post by gadders »

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…

All of these arguments boil down to "we don't have the judges we want in the Supreme Court so we need to change the constitution to get the political decisions we want enacted."

Obviously currently, it's left wing talking points that they want enacted - abortion, gun control, probably free speech limits. I'm sure if/when the court gets packed with Democrat-leaning judges, Republicans will do the reverse.

I'm fine with both sides doing that - it's politics after all - it's when activists try and portray their attemps as non-partisan that it annoys me.

When the author throws in left-wing dog whistles like "There’s a good reason that American constitutional amendments are not decided through national referendums. (Consider, after all, that Brexit was decided by a national popular referendum.)" you can immediately determine their motives.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#580

Post by naasking »

Nursie wrote: post #355
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…

Part of the problem in the last half century does appear to be that consensus is itself no longer desirable or possible - the two-party system in the US appears to have an element of adversarial behaviour which is purely for the sake of being against the other guy. So it's not so much that half the country is dead against particular measures because of their merits or values, but they will be set against change it si…

> the two-party system in the US appears to have an element of adversarial behaviour which is purely for the sake of being against the other guy.

Because it serves to maintain a delicate balance: donors fill the coffers of both parties and offer cushy jobs after their term in office, and in return politicians don't pass any legislation that can meaningfully threaten the bottom line of those donors, even though that kind of legislation would actually help the most people and be quite popular. This is why large corporations donate almost equally to both parties, from defense contractors to pharma.

Instead of those meaningful changes which would unite the country, politicians set up culture war issues to set half the country against the other half, because culture war issues are semantic language games where nobody wins and everybody loses. It's bikeshedding writ large.

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