How dare you try and change an amendment
Up until about a hundred years ago we were doing it all the time.
More amendments were ratified in the latter half of 20th century than the entire 19th (6 vs. 4).
Reminds me of this classic Jim Jefferies bit
Because the constitution is the document that lays out the foundation for all of our legal rights and the limitations placed on the government that are intended to keep it accountable to the people. It’s not perfect, but it does cover a hell of a lot, even more gets expanded on through legislation and the courts, and when necessary it can be (and has been) amended.
But it’s also just ink and parchment. It can’t do anything if the government decides to ignore it. It’s the people who give power to the constitution. The more it is valued by the people across the country, throughout the political spectrum, both inside and outside the halls of power, the more likely it will be that those protections are respected. And when those protections are violated, people are far more likely to push back. And many within the government are also more likely to push back. That’s literally the only reason we didn’t have an overturned election, because numerous people at all levels of government said no, many despite being aligned with the assholes that were trying to stay in power.
So yes, I would very much prefer it if everyone would treat the constitution with some reverence if that’s what it takes. The alternative is not pretty.
Maybe.
But we don’t have people storming the capital in an attempt to overthrow elections here (UK) and we don’t have a formal constitution.
The two things might be unrelated.
And we did have some guys trying to storm the Reichstag in Berlin, we do have a constitution, but we don’t call it constitution and it’s also more of a permanent draft.
IMO the constitution is that important to Americans, because they don’t really have tradition or culture to draw from. The USA is a very young country. Yes I know that technically modern day Germany, Italy and others are younger. However, those countries have many centuries of tradition and culture to draw from.
Pretty much every country has some form of ‘the highest law’, which is intentionally kept rather abstract. Afterall it is the framework for more specific laws to fill in and regulate daily life. But an identity and feeling of self for the USA pretty much started with the civil war. Which lead to the writing of the constitution, their ‘highest law’. The constitution is part of the creation mythos for the USA. A marking point of when people start to think of themselves as Americans, a sovereign entity. Since the USA, compared to other countries, doesn’t have much more culture to draw from, the relative importance of that one piece is inevitably higher.
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Given the state of the country thanks to the Tories, maybe you should.
Honestly, it’s been in continual decline my entire life. Thatcher put an end to any sense of social responsibility, New Labour ushered in the era of post-truth politics, Boris and his bunch didn’t even have to pretend that they were acting in the interest of the country.
Anything short of full political reform will only end up being the next phase in this hell spiral.
That is not the issue at all though, you can change the constitution and still hold it in reverence, in fact it would probably be easier to have reverence for it if that was possible.
The problem is that all political constructs does become antiquated over time. It needs to be updated and modernised through amendments or even a rewrite, but the way the US political system is dictated to be makes it virtually impossible to do now. Even mundane legislation cannot be passed any longer, let alone amendments. It is a problem which should have been taken care of long ago, but now it is basically too late for even the slightest attempts at tweaking it.
This comment and this title are two separate things in my opinion. I don’t give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That’s why we’ve amended the Constitution several times. The originalist viewpoint of the Constitution is ridiculous and completely counter even to how the founders wanted the document to act, funny enough.
As for why it’s treated like a holy book – it’s basically a set of rules for our government and what laws are okay and which laws aren’t okay. Think of it like a social contract that everyone signed. It’s how we’ve agreed to live together and treat each other. Unlike a holy book though it can and has been changed.
It’s quite literally the legal foundation of the country.
I don’t give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That’s why we’ve amended the Constitution several times.
Repeating myself here, but, the founders wanted us to adjust the Constitution over time, to meet the needs of the current generation.
Right, and we have, but the bar being high seems reasonable.
Can we please not turn microblog memes into the new whitepeopletwitter where we just post unnuanced political opinions rather than funny memes? Microblogs are a bad platform for political discourse.
That’s a valid point, got it.
Well the very first and most important thing they wanted was to give you the right to say that or whatever you want about them.
Before they enshrined that concept in their document, saying such things about members of your government would get you jailed or executed.
Sounds like it was useful. Now it seems like it just differentiates us from countries that can do something about the spread of hate.
Not against the Constitution, but the Freedom of Speech **is **perhaps the most anachronistic freedom if you look at much of Europe.
Sounds like it was useful.
It still is? Unless you think someone should be able to go to jail for making a joke about a government official.
Not against the Constitution, but the Freedom of Speech **is **perhaps the most anachronistic freedom if you look at much of Europe.
Yeah you say that when a party you support is in power.
Before getting into line items, let me clarify that I’m talking about the “Freedom of Speech” in capitals, referring to the part of the First Amendment, not to laws that allow people free expression in general.
It still is? Unless you think someone should be able to go to jail for making a joke about a government official.
That’s an unintentionally leading question, in my opinion. In response, let me point you to the majority of Europe where untethered speech is not an inalienable right, and yet it’s still perfectly legal to make jokes about government officials. Yes, there are parts of Europe where you can’t. I’m not fond of lèse-majesté laws, but you don’t need untethered free speech to forbid just that one type of law.
We’d be in a lot better place if this paragraph from the ECHR’s freedom of expression were attached to it:
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. -cited
Yeah you say that when a party you support is in power.
Bingo. I say that the party in power, even if I somewhat support it, should not be Constitutionally empowered to lie to us from a position of authority. They should not be allowed to use their position to “freely express” things that hurt others. In fact, free expression in speech belongs with all other free expressions. I can throw my hands around unless I’m intentionally throwing them into innocents’ faces.
In most of the world, free expression means when I know I’m not lying, and when I’m not being grossly negligent or antisocial in my speech. I’m sorry, but I approve of the censoring of Naziism or any organized expression that seeks to eradicate or punish any ethnicity. I would support a law that forbids people from what the South did after our Civil War, targeted lies that have led to over a century of the country “expressing” the supposed inferiority of non-white people.
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The framework as described in the constitutional has led to full and complete political gridlock
Honestly one of the best parts about it. Everything both parties can agree on doing federally lately is awful. The things they want to do but can’t because of the constitution are worse.
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That seems dangerously optimistic to me though. If what should be done is not what elected officials will do, and what they will do is what should not be done, then isn’t removing the barriers constraining them from acting just going to make things much worse? Even if you can get a government in office sometimes that is not malevolent, it would still be a net negative.
For it to be worth it, you would have to either have a realistic path to consistently electing people that serve the will of an informed and thoughtful population, or the circumstances are so dire and the need to make positive changes so desperate that things can’t actually get much worse than a course of inaction so you might as well risk it. To me it doesn’t seem like either are the case yet; there is no clear path to that, and things could be much, much worse.
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Every other industrialized democracy is able to do this
I’m not convinced of this, especially with Europe flirting with stuff like encryption bans and far right extremism, other countries could benefit from more restrictive constitutions.
A government that doesn’t pass legislation isn’t the safety net you think, it is the precursor to authoritarian control and dictatorship
Can you give a specific example of this happening or rationale why it would happen?
If you live in [constitutional gridlock] then you should be arming yourself to the teeth right now and storming the government.
For what should be very obvious reasons this would be a disaster. This is the sort of mindset driving the events of Jan 6 and I hope those sorts of people with no respect for our republic fail.
This. The government in the US is thought of as a thing that exists over there. Like a king in his castle. But we call it a democracy. And in a democracy, governance is just the rules that we set up to keep our communities operating in a sustainable way that provides the community members with the highest quality of life. So the government, is really just us following our own rules.
Rules that are well designed have a defined scope, and address known caveats and risks. Good governance rules come with qualitative and quantitative monitoring built into them, as well as periodic evaluation. The evaluation should identify whether the rule is still providing the intended service to society, how well it is doing so, and how to improve it based on lessons learned and ever-evolving social context. Then the rule is iteratively improved so that the intended outcomes, both statistically and culturally, are improved, based on evidence and feedback.
The rules themselves would be governed by a set of agreed-upon principles that reflect the culture and aspirations of a people, usually in the form of a constitution or charter. These principles, likewise, would be subject to periodic review for improvement or retiring to history.
My point is that the world changes, society changes, culture changes, the environment changes, people change and so too should the principles and rules which we design to make our lives better, also change.
The longer the gap between their last update and the present moment, the worse of a job they do in addressing the needs of the present moment.
I like the constitution because I don’t want Matt Gaetz to be able to propose whatever nonsense he wants. It’s not a perfect document, but it enshrines certain fundamental protections that really shouldn’t be fucked with.
Because according to our education system, we’re the only country that has a constitution, and we used it to beat the greatest evil: taxing rich people.
WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
Where is this narrative of intentionally forgetting that the grievance was specifically over having no say in the fucking matter despite being the ones who actually have to live with the decisions coming from‽ Westminster‽
This narrative is like calling the Haitian revolution an uprising against having to respect property rights!
Except you know the Haitian revolution was a slave revolt and the American Revolution was a slave owners revolt, so a little different.
The taxes they had grievances with were mostly for their “defense” against french encroachment… The colonial governments also had problems with the fact that Britain trying to balance peace with the natives didn’t plan to expand beyond the Appalachian mountains and they wanted more…
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america mostly carried out its own defense in the 7 years war, what Britain was citing as defense costs was their from england regulars fucking it up until American trained units were allowed to defend themselves again, and also
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the reason the expansion denial was so unpopular is because the brits sprung that out of nowhere when settlement had already been going on in the region for decades. The american front of the war was defending americans already living in the ohio country from the french and the brits just decided unilaterally to make them leave anyways. Also, that land wasn’t given to the natives, it was given to the quebecers who had been trying to kill all the Americans so they could take the land. Britain literally made America pay for defending itself after imposing “victory” conditions that were no different than if they had completely lost the war.
Again, you see that the fucking problem was without representation
You can throw whatever original sin you want at the issue, doesn’t change that the revolutionary war happened because the brits fucking refused at every opportunity to listen to the people they were making laws about.
Over and over again the crisis could have been resolved by just giving the colonists any opportunity to feel like they had a say in the decision making and were equal parts of the country they were required to view themselves as a part of.
The revolution started because the brits made tea cheaper but some colonial merchants got squeezed out. We would all be much better off if they never revolted, and got their independence a little bit later like Canada.
We would all be much better off if they never revolted, and got their independence a little bit later like Canada.
Why??
We’d have a more democratic parliamentary government and banned slavery earlier and without a civil war.
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and the American Revolution was a slave owners revolt
Not my half. I get to call John Adams and John Q Adams “my folks”. John Adams signed the declaration (we out of the country when the Constitution was signed) and his plan was always to wipe out slavery.
Because many of those men were flat-out geniuses. They penned a fine constitution and outlined ideals we should strive to achieve. That doesn’t mean they knew the best way to legislate modern issues though , like the internet. That brings us back to their genius. They outlined a process to revise, or amend if you will, the laws of the land. The biggest problem that they didn’t foresee is that America would regress into fervent tribalism, completely unwilling to amend anything that might benefit another tribe. So we’re stuck, locked in the year 1992 when the last amendment was written. Actually that’s not completely true. Many of them did foresee the dangers of a bicameral partisan system, and issued abundant warnings about it. Unfortunately they really didn’t anticipate just how insulated and shameless many of our politicians would become, probably because tar and feathers in the public square was still a possibility back then.
Thing is, yesterday’s geniuses are today’s average person, average intelligence is going up and there’s tons more people on the planet today vs back then, that’s a whole lot of geniuses that could create a much better constitution but that are unable to because some people at the other end of the spectrum act like some dude 250 years ago could predict the world we would live in today (when they in fact predicted that the Constitution would need to be amended in the future).
Yeah you said it yourself, the constitution is meant to be amended. We haven’t seen a new amendment in 31 years because our politicians are thoroughly dedicated to blocking each other.
That’s not a problem with the constitution, though. That’s a problem with the backstabbing nature of politics/culture wars in the USA.
The idea is supposed to be that we only update the structure of our government as needed when there’s broad support for it. That should be easy when we’re considering a change that’s obviously in the public interest.
But right now, if someone from the “wrong” party says that the sky is blue, the other party will come up with all sorts of reasons why They Are Wrong And Evil. You can’t cooperate when the only rule is to badmouth the other guy.
Exactly.
average intelligence is going up
Not anymore. Average intelligence in Western countries plateaud and started dropping around 10 years ago.
That’s still how many years of it going up since the US founding fathers?
Take the founding fathers and send them to today’s world and they’ll end up homeless.wrong comment chainMy point still stands.
Only because they lack knowledge, not because they lack intelligence. They were extremely intelligent men.
Oh sorry, that seconds part (added as an edit) should have went in my reply to the other comment that mentioned sending someone from today back in time to the days of the founding fathers!
Nope, the political leaders that founded the USA were extremely well educated and would probably put the average modern person to shame on any topic or skill that wasn’t invented after their death. Motherfuckers these days can barely read and write.
The average dumbass knows how to Google stuff now, and feels like they are smart because they can operate a touch screen device and access information.
But if you take that same “smart” average modern dumbass back to colonial USA times and they would not know how to survive at all. They would be like “where’s my cheeseburger? Where’s my shower?” and just fucking die of bacterial infection from stubbing their toe probably. Those old dudes were building their own houses, farming their own food, writing long political essays and shit. They were out there inventing all the stuff we take for granted now.
And today there’s more and more very well educated people around. Heck, compare the number of women that had access to university back then vs today.
Take the founding fathers and send them to today’s world and they’ll end up homeless.
My point is that they might have been very smart and educated back then, people like them exist today and there’s much more of them, we just don’t listen to them.
In any governing system, something has to be supreme. Something has to be the final word in settling disputes. There are basically three options: Fiat, convention, or consensus. Consensus is really only practical in small groups, so we can put that option to the side. What remains is the choice between rule by the whims of a person or group, and the rule of law.
Despite their many flaws, the founders of the American republic were at least smart enough to realize that there would be a constant temptation to set aside the rule of law and let a person dictate things. So the foundational law (the constitution) was made sacrosanct in the way that the king had been. To lose the rule of law is to lose the republic, and return to tyranny.
Consensus is really only practical in small groups
Not at all, that’s the whole point of a republic, it’s consensus based.
I suppose I should have said “unanimity” rather than “consensus”. But I already wrote it down, so now it can never be amended.
The irony that you can edit your comment does not go unnoticed.
Made me chuckle
Top comment of the week
The forefathers had some of the most sensible ideology in the history of humankind. What other country established limits on the power of their government as a foundational document?
They’re still very sound principles to this day.
Unfortunately our current government doesn’t concern themselves with those principles.
But I will agree with what was likely the point of this post, which is that the Constitution is not and was never supposed to be timeless, and the founders would agree with that too.
Every country with a constitution?
Shhh, you’re screwing up their circle jerk.
Many constitutions of many modern liberal democracies are modeled or inspired off of the US Constitution. Though now newer ones are modeled instead of its derivatives (kind of lending credence to this thread’s message of, maybe we should update the constitution more).
established limits on the power of their government as a foundational document
I’d argue that’s a blessing and a curse.
The framers were coming off a monarchy. They saw government power as dangerous and thought that it had to be limited. But they didn’t really consider that other groups might gain greater power than governments.
Unfortunately, we have exactly that problem. Organizations with sufficient money often rival governments for power.
The checks and balances that were designed to protect ordinary citizens from government also protect large multinational corporations and ultra rich families and individuals. The result is often that those powerful non-government actors can often subvert government and ultimately cause the same, or even worse, problems.
The result is often that those powerful non-government actors can often subvert government and ultimately cause the same, or even worse, problems.
Only if we treat corporations like they are citizens/people, and money as speech.
We could legislate those away in a heartbeat, if “We the People” wanted to.
I sort of agree but I think it’s much more complicated than that.
Our current legal framework have any specific mechanisms for reigning in the power of powerful non-government actors. At best, a bunch of people can realize that such an actor is doing something shady, then ask their legislators to do something about it, then hope that enough other people have asked their legislators the same thing. People can try to accelerate that by creating awareness campaigns (essentially adopting some of the power of such actors).
The problem is the well heeled actors can do all the same things much faster. When some rich private organization decides that they want a change, they can speak directly to legislators across state lines, they can openly or secretly fund massive (dis)information campaigns. “We the people” are at a severe disadvantage against that.
Consider that there are several initiatives that the majority of US citizens support that US legislators still refuse to implement.
I sort of agree but I think it’s much more complicated than that.
Complicated doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Our current legal framework have any specific mechanisms for reigning in the power of powerful non-government actors.
It does, they could re-enable Citizens United for a start.
Without going down the rabbit hole and getting stuck in the weeds, generally speaking, Congress can pass any laws it wants, and as long as they’re constitutional they affect us.
Consider that there are several initiatives that the majority of US citizens support that US legislators still refuse to implement.
Well if we voted in legislators who would implement the initiatives we wanted, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s a whole different subject to discuss.
We can and should try but we’re going to be doing so against a much better funded lobbying group. Those lobbyists can fight that consistently while we try to maintain concentration across countless other political issues.
The Citizens United decision was years ago. Rage against it has moved on and many don’t even know about it. Remember Net Neutrality? We had the regulations and media companies still managed to get rid of it.
The Citizens United decision was years ago. Rage against it has moved on and many don’t even know about it.
Actually I still hear people talk about it now and then, and I mentioned it myself as well. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that people have moved on, it’s just on the back burner, waiting for the next Congress that hopefully has a more decisive percentage so more voting can be done.
And besides, my point in mentioning it was to show that you can affect change and curb individuals with excessive power who can corrupt the process for everyone else via new laws and brought back old laws.
Remember Net Neutrality? We had the regulations and media companies still managed to get rid of it.
Actually, it was the former president who installed a chairperson of the FCC that got rid of it.
Also, Net Neutrality is coming back, since the current President put in a new chairperson to lead the FCC.
Which party you vote for does matter.
Responding to your overall tone of your opinions, the thinking that change will never happen is not correct.
Things just go back and forth, because we’re divided nation, but things do get done, and everyone should have a voice and how that’s done, even if it means to change takes longer to happen.
It would be a herculean effort to change Citizens United. It was a Supreme Court decision. So it would require either swapping out several justices or convincing a large number of Republicans to join in on a legislative change. The Democrats had both chambers and the White House since then and either it was still out of reach or just not a priority.
I’ve also heard rumors that Net Neutrality is coming back but it hasn’t happened yet. We handle it at the regulatory level rather than the legislative level. So even if Biden does manage to get it re-instated, it will likely disappear again with the next Republican president. Policies like that need to be consistent or they don’t really work. Otherwise we’re essentially telling large media companies, “You can totally mess with competitors access capabilities but only every other presidential term.” That give them plenty of time to bankrupt competitors.
My tone isn’t meant to suggest that change will never happen. Change is inevitable. Any system will favor some changes over others. Powerful entities are pretty good at tilting the playing field in their favor. Citizens United is just one such example. Over time that creates an environment that favors those powerful entities over less powerful entities. It’s a self re-inforcing decision in that it makes it easier for groups like Citizens United to promote legislation sympathetic to it’s own power.
Which party you vote for does matter but it’s not everything. Democrats where happy to join with Republicans in passing the PATRIOT act. After Ross Perot had a non-trivial showing they were eager to join up with Republicans in pushing 3rd party candidates out of the debates.
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The checks and balances that were designed to protect ordinary citizens from government also protect large multinational corporations and ultra rich families and individuals.
How do you figure?
The constitution doesn’t recognize groups of people as anything more than a group of people. Even if they’ve set up mechanisms that greatly magnify their power. It also doesn’t recognize any power imbalance. It just lumps everyone together and treats everyone as equal. (Some exceptions may apply)
That’s a good thing not a bad thing.
It’s both. Any policy has downsides.
I’ll use one of the internet’s current favorite villains as an example. If the Lemmy admins decide to kick out some set of users, it won’t have much effect on the world. When Elon decides who is and isn’t allowed to have an account on his servers, it can have a massive impact on legislation and public behavior. Our laws mostly treat those the same.
I will agree with what was likely the point of this post, which is that the Constitution is not and was never supposed to be timeless, and the founders would agree with that too.
Also, the US Constitution is a second attempt. Operating briefly under the Articles of Confederation outright did not work because the federal government couldn’t fund itself. They threw that away and created the present system which almost outright doesn’t work. That’s progress.
The constitution is the foundation of the entire US legal system. Without it the whole thing collapses.
There is so much nuance to it, and it outlines a good system. However it is based on assumptions about the integrity, awareness, and independence of thought each citizen would have that have been systematically undermined.
Even the best written laws are not immune to misinterpretation, seems to be a big problem.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean it is infallible.
I mean we wouldnt need governments and legal systems if anything was infallible.
True as that may be, the sanctity it is held to is immensely harmful, as it kills any chance of improvement and progress.
It has barely anything in it. How exactly is it killing any chance of improvement and progress? The only really harmful thing I can think of in the constitution is the electoral college. I think most of the problems with it are just because of how much room it leaves for interpretation.
Another big constitutional issue is the influence of money in Federal elections. It is a logical outgrowth of the first amendment, but causes a ton of problems. Citizens United was rightly decided, it’s just that the outcome sucks.
I used to ask people:
If you could write a constitutional amendment of 15 words or less, what would it say?
It seems more like just another thing the constitution overlooked, by being too vague.
This is a pretty ignorant take. We can change the rules whenever we want. This is the whole process of amendments.
I would be mildly surprised if there’s every another amendment again, very surprised if there’s one in our lifetime.
Nah, i would 100% believe term limits for supreme court eventually or maybe even repeal/revise of the 16th amendment… amendment to limit tax dollars used on foreign engagements… amendment to make funding to congress transparent… amendment to put limits on predatory loans… amendment to officially not allow sitting presidents to run businesses…
Idunno feels like theres still some bipartisan opportunities
When you say “eventually,” what are we talking about? Is this simply the passage of time or would something have to change, in your opinion?
Honestly i can only speculate but my best guess is that these changes could be driven after mass protests in the coming years and the senior citizens of our senate dying off.
We can change the rules whenever we want.
Can we? The Equal Rights Amendment was supported by a majority of Americans but it never passed.
If only they supported it enough to actually show up at the elections that would have affected the chance of the amendment passing.
Hmmm, it’s been a while since ive read about read about that one, but wasnt there contraversy on the wording of that? Like it could adversely affect womens rights if that were passed or that it is the same protections under the 14th… but last time I checked something like 3/4 of all the states have already ratified the ERA in the states side. It is a weird one
The opposition of the ERA was almost entirely from the right and focused on scaremongering about the end of traditional gender roles.
Dont get me wrong, i know the opposition was coming from the right but im just saying what I remember the reasoning was. Places like New York and Oregon have codified it into their own state constitutions where as Oklahoma and Alabama havent.
I know it took many years to allow same sex marriage but it fell under the 14th. I would like to think that these sorts of rights are only bound to be given within my lifetime.
I think the take has more to do with the rather depressing amount of originalists stocking the courts of American Constitutional law. Like Justice’s Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Barrett. Originalism in Constitutional law practice draws it’s primary guiding light from the idea that Constitutional law should be adjudicated based on what the perspective of what the authors of the founding documents intentions were. Often this leads to extremely anachronistic takes on the document rather than a concern for the people whom it effects because it treats the country as though the greatest authority is to fictionalized versions of it’s authors rather than the needs of it’s living citizenry.
The constitution itself is an important document… but it is less important than the principles that guide how it is actively utilized by living justices.
We do need to think long and hard before making changes. If we make changes willy nilly, it all becomes rather meaningless.
And the Justices are supposed to follow the constitution and the law, that’s literally their job. It’s up to Congress to change it if/when needed. The court is there to interpret the law, not to make it. If Congress is too chicken shit to make laws, because they’re worried how it will impact their future election prospects, then they should be removed from office. I’ve lost all tolerance for their inaction. So many things are being pushed to the courts, because Congress can’t pull their collective heads from their collective asses.
The issue with “following the constitution and the law” is that any law has sort of component parts. What a Justice values always becomes in some way an application of the law. An easy example is the letter of the law vs the spirit of the law.
It gets murkier than that. Say you have a law, let’s take a pretty straightforward one. “Killing someone is illegal except as a form of self defense to preserve one’s own life”. Seems pretty basic… But then you are not dealing with something that did happen (Killing someone) with something that only potentially could have happened but didn’t (that person killing you). Every single component peice in that law requires a definition Killing someone becomes a modifiable base where whether you are guilty is based on how one reads the intention and capability of someone who isn’t there to question because the defendant killed them. What if the defendant was legitimately in fear for their life but that fear was entirely misplaced? What if that person put themselves knowingly into greater danger to essentially unlock the ability to kill someone in self defense? The spirit of the law is often envoked to close loopholes the original writer of the law missed because they didn’t forsee every possible circumstance but those things are not written in those laws… So what did the writer actually intend? What are the consequences the different possible active applications of the law have? How does it interact with other laws in the system and if it falls between two competing laws which law is more important to be upheld? What, counts as the guiding authority in application of the law.
A raft of precedent is usually used to see how other Justices handled similar issues in the past but precedent is more a guideline than a hard and fast rule. Every individual Justice in a system shapes the law. Appeals may push it higher in the system challenge the law against other laws but every level of law you have the same battle. Spirit vs letter of law, reaching consensus on defining every single word mentioned in the law , establishing what component peice of the law is the most important bit and then ordering the other components into priority and then either trying to squash other interpretations of the law as presented by the defense into that existing mold or realizing that the law was written without an important part that was likely not intended and changing precedent to accommodate leniency after the fact.
That’s exactly the problem, it is impossible to change it now. The system itself prevents any more changes because it has become so archaic and corrupt.
Books and documents (any media, really) should be read, analyzed, and critiqued, not put into a shrine and worshipped, because texts written on paper aren’t supposed to be immutable or even always right, or they could be appropriate for the time they are written in, but no longer meets the changing social environment of the current age, which is why it is best for these important documents to always be updated to reflect the practical needs of the time.
So, yes, I think the “do everything as the Founders wanted” attitude in the States is quite silly.
So, yes, I think the “do everything as the Founders wanted” attitude in the States is quite silly.
Well the founders wanted us to adjust the Constitution over time to meet the needs of the current generation.
But the current crop of Supreme Court Justices in the States(Originalists?) would not interpret it that way but treat the Constitution only as valid as it is originally written, and in essence, deified its text as perfect and immutable, which is the problem here.
No, they’d say if you want it to change, you should change it, not rely on some extralegal function of SCOTUS to reinterpret it every few years.
Really? Then why do they insist on an unconstitutional ability to hand down precedents that everyone has to follow as they see fit? It’s not really one of the constitutional powers of the Supreme Court to make decisions in legal cases that define or refine our laws. That would mean everything like Dred Scott v Sanford wouldn’t exist in how our laws function.
Including the bible
Well, of course, the Bible wasn’t really some hallowed immutable document as some might think it is, there has been multiple translations with differences between each of them.
Of course, I still think any version of the Bible is a good read, regardless of whether you are religious or not.
because it’s a manufactured reverence for their idea of the country by our education system. Our history classes are laden with U.S. propaganda that makes a lot of Americans think a lot of incorrect things about our history. The infallibility of our founding fathers is one of those things.
