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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#671

Post by theluketaylor »

WalterBright wrote: post #666
theluketaylor wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time now I have tried to sum up the differences between the US and Canada in our founding principals. Canada's is "Peace, Order, and Good Government". Contrast that against the "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" and the fundamental differences in our approaches to government make a lot more sense. We're much more like the UK than the US in the function of government and the construction of laws,…

> The US is a free speech extremist country Jeez, it is hardly extreme. BTW, free speech does not include libel, slander, specific threats, or inciting riots. > we rank higher on the press freedom index Canada does? Based on what? Note that no matter how extremely negative the press was about Trump, never once did the government make any legal threats against them about it.

The US has the most expansive free speech laws in the entire world. Perhaps 'extremist' is a bit hyperbolic, but it's certainly true US free speech laws go far beyond any others.

Reporters Without Borders maintains a press freedom index. Their justification is detailed here: https://rsf.org/en/index

Canada ranks 19, the US 42

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#672

Post by denton-scratch »

WalterBright wrote: post #664
denton-scratch wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those "inalienable" rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence /me not subject to USA law. I've already said that I think "rights" are a fiction; so to me, inalienable rights are an inalienable fiction. Just because they've been written down doesn't make them real. What are these rights? (I'm not asking for their enumeration; I want to know where they come from, what they're made of, if you like). I did ph…

They come from human nature. The evidence comes from how well a society thrives, or fails to thrive, under particular sets of rights. The US has thrived, so its concept of rights is more accurate than, say, communist rights, under which people do very poorly.

Well, OK. Or maybe they come from garden compost, or the luminiferous aether. You're just making bald assertions.

As far as "communist rights" are concerned, I don't think the idea of rights has much prominence in communist thought.

And your linking of rights (as you conceive of rights) with "thriving" (which you haven't defined, but I assume you mean wealth) is pretty fishy. Many people in the USA are not wealthy at all.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#673

Post by indymike »

denton-scratch wrote: post #638
indymike wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> s I've increasingly leaned to the view that these rights are mostly a legal fiction Ultimately all constitutions are just ink on paper (or parchment depending on age) and are only as good as the people who govern. > things that are supposedly rights are highly subjective political footballs. The fabric of society is a pitch where political football is played. The US Constitution is a product of the times when it wa…

This is the kind of nonsense that is produced by the US Constitution: https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Texas.jpg

> This is the kind of nonsense that is produced by the US Constitution:

How Texas draws congressional districts is up to the people of the Great State of Texas.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#674

Post by indymike »

denton-scratch wrote: post #641
WalterBright wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how you can tell if a set of rights is more correct or less correct - how well a country organized around those rights thrives, or fails to thrive. The US has thrived, meaning its definition of rights is reasonably on the mark.

Yeah, well I don't see a country that's thriving, except in terms of wealth (for some). I see a country lurching towards another Civil War. Anyway, my point was that I don't think these rights exist, and that framing things in terms of rights is arse-over-tit. I'm not interested in arguing whether the US chose the right set of rights; I'm saying I have no idea what a "right" is, other than a privilege granted by law.

> I'm saying I have no idea what a "right" is, other than a privilege granted by law.

Yep, and Constitutions define these privileges and make them supreme, above other laws.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#675

Post by jakeogh »

biztos wrote: post #469
sosull wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching this play out (as a non-US person), there’s very little comfort in the distinction between court ignoring the law and the court interpreting the law in a way that is different to historic precedent. The act of interpretation infers that the court is making some kind of justification – backing these changes up by explaining them. Typically this would happen via written decision or at least by stare decisis. B…

> The fire in a crowded theatre standard was overturned… According to Wikipedia that standard was explicitly upheld as the example of speech that would be prosecuted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

Fire! Fire!! Fire!!! Christopher Hitchens gave an excellent overview of that case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#676

Post by dragonwriter »

lettergram wrote: post #272
anonymousiam wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! In addition, the 10th amendment should prevent, but has not stopped Congress from passing most of the laws it has passed. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/

There's a few reasons this broke down... 1. The 17th amendment (1912) - Electing senators by popular vote broke the state representation in the federal government. States no longer had representation to protect their sovereignty. 2. The federal reserve act (1913) - enables government to self-fund by printing money and enforces everyone onto a single, centrally controlled bank. 3. The 16th amendment (1913) - Federal i…

> The federal reserve act (1913) - enables government to self-fund by printing money

The government was always able to do that. Independent central banking made it harder, not easier (that’s why independent central banking helps trust in the currency, because it divorces monetary from fiscal policy, and helping maintain trust in the currency is why you do it.)

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#677

Post by chiefalchemist »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #644
chiefalchemist wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony? Nowhere, that I'm aware of, is there anything in the founding documents about limiting choice to two parties. We can't keep filtering everything through a binary lens and expect to get anything but binary opposing views. The tool (i.e. The Constitution) is fine. The problem is at this point it's being used as a hammer and it's a screwdriver. Ya can't blame the tool for those who insist on misusing it.

Democracies that elect powerful presidents directly are usually two party systems. Only the indirect vote of the government through a parliament makes multi party systems more stable.

Nonetheless, there is nothing that stipulates two parties and certainly not the two parties we have currently.

We're too top heavy and we're governed by a cartel. That's not The Constitution's fault.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#678

Post by nkozyra »

EricE wrote: post #611
nkozyra wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength It's not just the Constitution, it's the entirety of the American system, which seems designed to use "checks and balances" as veritable roadblocks to slow everything down. I agree that - in theory - it's great and very smart, because if the government was indeed designed around truths that are self-evident (i.e. inherently "true" and immut…

"So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this." lol - and yet we did eventually fix it. So much for the unchangeability of US government. So yeah, the rigidity still worked - and continues to work. It's absolutely not a bug, but the most important feature in preserving our republic.

> So much for the unchangeability of US government.

I didn't say it was "unchangeable," and ... well, that's obviously not true.

This is all about the difficulty of changing. My premise is that changes that push closer to the stated core principles of the founders are more likely to happen than others.

I wouldn't say rigidity "works" in this case, as several generations of slaves and women and other minorities might attest. Had we been more open to change in the spirit of the constitution rather than the word, perhaps there'd be less resistance.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#679

Post by torstenvl »

staticman2 wrote: post #654
torstenvl wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

You are doing this weird thing I see on this web site at times when someones takes a court case they like and accepts whatever the judge states carte blanche. No further reading required. The fact judicial review is not in the constitution is not controversial. Here's what Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts web sight says: "The best-known power of the Supreme Court is judicial review, or the ability of the Cour…

I'm not just someone "on this website," I'm a Harvard-educated lawyer in the federal government with over a decade of experience, including litigating Constitutional issues in federal district court. I assure you, there have been years and years of "further reading" and it was emphatically required.

It's a trendy take to say that judicial review isn't in the Constitution, and that may be superficially true, but it ignores two important facts that contradict that take:

(1) Article III's explicit grant of "appellate jurisdiction ... as to law"

(2) The Framers' own words in the Judiciary Act of 1789, which explicitly anticipates cases "draw[ing] in question the validity of a treaty or statute of, or an authority exercised under the United States, [where] the decision is against their validity" and reaffirms that such decisions may be "reversed or affirmed in the Supreme Court of the United States."

It is very clear what "appellate jurisdiction ... as to law" in "cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made" means. And for anyone who has any lingering doubts, just look to how the Framers implemented it in the very first Judiciary Act, less than seven months after the Constitution went into effect.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#680

Post by nkozyra »

bavell wrote: post #616
heywoodlh wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this." > yet we did eventually fix it. So much for the unchangeability of US government. As far as I understand, African Americans were still not considered equal in many states over 100 years after the very bloody Civil War to abolish slavery of African Americans. I don't consider this a good example of a high…

You're confusing government with citizens. The letter of the law changed but the culture lagged behind.

> You're confusing government with citizens. The letter of the law changed but the culture lagged behind.

I don't they are. The law that abolished slavery changed, but racial segregation was - by definition - inequality. That it was postfixed "but equal" really underscored how hard they tried to dress it up.

It was confirmed - by governments - in a number of cases, Plessy v. Ferguson being the canonical one.

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