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The Purpose Of The Bill Of Rights

soylentgreen said:
Which is why britain now has an unwritten constitution instead of the magna carta. But they cannot create a written constitution without first riding themselves of the magna cartsa. Which they have not done, hence the unwritten one.
Some counties might have good reasons. The fact that you fail to point out any but instead can only give a fallacious argument of the many do so it must be ok is far more telling as a fail.


And yet look at the op. Many americans would agree that the constitution is a work of god. So i would not be so hasty as to down play what american stupidity can achieve.
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First of all, your bigotry aside, Americans do not believe their constitution is the work of God. I'm wondering how many Americans you actually know. Many of us are quite critical of the faults in our constitution. My question to you would be, if we were to throw it out, how could it possibly be replaced with an unwritten one? How could we have designed an unwritten constitution in 1787 rather than the written one? I don't think you are thinking it through, and if my argument is weak or fallacious, well, I don't think you have come up with much of one at all. You want a better argument? Fine. Here's one.

Let me explain it this way as to why we have a written constitution and the UK, for example, doesn't. The UK has had a parliamentary tradition, of sorts, since medieval times. It developed very gradually over hundreds of years, by custom. The Magna Carta was more of a foundation, on which the rest of the constitution, the unwritten bits, were formed. As the need arose, more customs and norms were added into the law-making and governing procedure of the realm. There was no need for a written constitution, because what was agreed upon as the normal system of governance was already being practiced daily, without the need to get agreement on it from all the communities of the realm. Not only that, it came "from above" (from the crown) rather than from the bottom up, as did the American one. The crown granted (or rather was forced to grant at sword-point) rights and privileges and an agreement on how the realm was to be governed. Not all in the Magna Carta was exactly "new". Great Councils (it mentions "great council" not "parliament" by name) of the nobles of the realm had been called into session by English kings before 1215. The MC itself drew on customs that were already prevalent in the realm; the king was forced by the barons in the revolt to agree to adhere to them, permanently.

The United States, by contrast, broke itself free of the constraints of the British Empire, and had to design a whole new REPUBLICAN system, at odds with the regal and parliamentary tradition of Great Britain, from scratch. Therefore, it had to be agreed upon by the thirteen states exactly what form the government would take, and how it was to work. Such a complicated problem requires more than an oral agreement, or a treaty, or simply custom, in order to be described adequately and agreed upon. You have to write such a thing down, or no one would agree on what its terms are. There was no way to define these terms simply by custom, because the union of American states was brand new, and, by breaking with Great Britain, was therefore throwing away all those hundreds of years of tradition. Something new had to be created, and to get the agreement of the people who weren't at the convention, it had to be written and transmitted to them for their approval. How can you agree on customs when you're starting (almost) from scratch?

Does that explain it? You may not agree with my argument, but it's far from fallacious. You said "some countries might have good reasons". Care to state those reasons? And perhaps you might consider that we had good reasons, too, for having a written one--which I did state just now. Try to look at the rest of the world a little more objectively. It always looks silly when seen through the eyes of your own corner of the cosmos.
 
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Howard the Duck said:
What I want isn't relevant to this discussion. The fact is anything in the constitution is subject to removal via article 5.
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So therefore you're saying the first amendment is subject to removal via article 5 so its possible in such a situation for us to no longer have voting rights.
 
DebateChallenge said:
So therefore you're saying the first amendment is subject to removal via article 5 so its possible in such a situation for us to no longer have voting rights.
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There is only ONE prohibited kind of amendment according to Article V: no state can be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate (without its consent, which of course it likely wouldn't give).
 
Howard the Duck said:
There is little to no difference.
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The 18th amendment is still on the list of amendments. Ergo, it wasn't 'removed'....but it was 'repealed' by the 21st amendment.
 
DebateChallenge said:
So therefore you're saying the first amendment is subject to removal via article 5 so its possible in such a situation for us to no longer have voting rights.
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First amendment doesn't protect voting rights....the 15th amendment does. And yes, all the amendments are subject to the Article 5...aka...the Amendment Clause if 2/3 of both houses of congress vote to change it.
 
JimHackerMP said:
First of all, your bigotry aside, Americans do not believe their constitution is the work of God. I'm wondering how many Americans you actually know. Many of us are quite critical of the faults in our constitution. My question to you would be, if we were to throw it out, how could it possibly be replaced with an unwritten one? How could we have designed an unwritten constitution in 1787 rather than the written one? I don't think you are thinking it through, and if my argument is weak or fallacious, well, I don't think you have come up with much of one at all. You want a better argument? Fine. Here's one.
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I suggest you go back an read the op rather than pretend critical thinking is a part of the american lanscape. The op is not a lone voice pissing into the wind.
What america did in the beginning has nothing to do with what america is capable of today. The constitution itself allows for a change so all it does take is for a change to occur, nothing else
Let me explain it this way as to why we have a written constitution and the UK, for example, doesn't. The UK has had a parliamentary tradition, of sorts, since medieval times. It developed very gradually over hundreds of years, by custom. The Magna Carta was more of a foundation, on which the rest of the constitution, the unwritten bits, were formed. As the need arose, more customs and norms were added into the law-making and governing procedure of the realm. There was no need for a written constitution, because what was agreed upon as the normal system of governance was already being practiced daily, without the need to get agreement on it from all the communities of the realm. Not only that, it came "from above" (from the crown) rather than from the bottom up, as did the American one. The crown granted (or rather was forced to grant at sword-point) rights and privileges and an agreement on how the realm was to be governed. Not all in the Magna Carta was exactly "new". Great Councils (it mentions "great council" not "parliament" by name) of the nobles of the realm had been called into session by English kings before 1215. The MC itself drew on customs that were already prevalent in the realm; the king was forced by the barons in the revolt to agree to adhere to them, permanently.
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Of course it was. The magna carta was created in a time that suited that kind of thinking. Just as your constitution was created in a time suite to that kind of thinking. England however had the presence of mind to understand that times and needs change. Where as americans cling to the past and pretend that a bunch of men could forsee the future needs of a country forever.

The United States, by contrast, broke itself free of the constraints of the British Empire, and had to design a whole new REPUBLICAN system, at odds with the regal and parliamentary tradition of Great Britain, from scratch. Therefore, it had to be agreed upon by the thirteen states exactly what form the government would take, and how it was to work. Such a complicated problem requires more than an oral agreement, or a treaty, or simply custom, in order to be described adequately and agreed upon. You have to write such a thing down, or no one would agree on what its terms are. There was no way to define these terms simply by custom, because the union of American states was brand new, and, by breaking with Great Britain, was therefore throwing away all those hundreds of years of tradition. Something new had to be created, and to get the agreement of the people who weren't at the convention, it had to be written and transmitted to them for their approval. How can you agree on customs when you're starting (almost) from scratch?
.
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Do try and unerstand that i have nothing to complain about the history or reasons of the creation of the constitution. Your entire ramble is irrelevent. It does nothing to deal with what the present day feelings, superstitions and lack of eucation has done with your constitution. Which if you read the op again you will see is a complete nonsense of what a constitution is supposed to be.

And no i would not call this post of yours a fallacy. Your previous ones, yes they were a fallacy but this time you gave an explenation. However like the op you rely on the past being the same as the present. Your argument is that change is simply to complicated.
 
Does that explain it? You may not agree with my argument, but it's far from fallacious. You said "some countries might have good reasons". Care to state those reasons?
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Ok a link and i can provie more.
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-areas/constitutional-law/why-we-dont-need-a-written-constitution
First, they want a statement of values – of democratic, liberal values. This is less about a single written constitution than a statement of nationhood, or at least, a statement of why things shouldn’t go bad here. Second, they want judges to have broader powers to strike down legislation. Now, I could argue all day about why the Canadian notion of a “constitutional conversation” is better than the United States system of judicial review, and why the appointment of Gorsuch over Garland was a travesty, but let’s not forget, that’s what you get with a written constitution. I’d rather have parliamentary supremacy than judicial supremacy, and I’d rather not have a constitution that is so hard to change that there is constitutional protection of a right to bear arms that dates from 1791, but an equal rights amendment can’t be put into effect.
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And perhaps you might consider that we had good reasons, too, for having a written one--which I did state just now. Try to look at the rest of the world a little more objectively. It always looks silly when seen through the eyes of your own corner of the cosmos
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And that is exactly what you are doing. Refusing to look at any other example of governance because of a myopic view of the american system.
 
soylentgreen said:
I suggest you go back an read the op rather than pretend critical thinking is a part of the american lanscape. The op is not a lone voice pissing into the wind.
What america did in the beginning has nothing to do with what america is capable of today. The constitution itself allows for a change so all it does take is for a change to occur, nothing else


Of course it was. The magna carta was created in a time that suited that kind of thinking. Just as your constitution was created in a time suite to that kind of thinking. England however had the presence of mind to understand that times and needs change. Where as americans cling to the past and pretend that a bunch of men could forsee the future needs of a country forever.



Do try and unerstand that i have nothing to complain about the history or reasons of the creation of the constitution. Your entire ramble is irrelevent. It does nothing to deal with what the present day feelings, superstitions and lack of eucation has done with your constitution. Which if you read the op again you will see is a complete nonsense of what a constitution is supposed to be.

And no i would not call this post of yours a fallacy. Your previous ones, yes they were a fallacy but this time you gave an explenation. However like the op you rely on the past being the same as the present. Your argument is that change is simply to complicated.
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Where as americans cling to the past and pretend that a bunch of men could forsee the future needs of a country forever.
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The Constitution has a basis on many things, and the primary influence was the exhaustive research of any nations and empires failed over the course of world history. The structure of the US Constitution, is followed, was created to prevent that and to protect the US from human nature.
 
Tennyson said:
The Constitution has a basis on many things, and the primary influence was the exhaustive research of any nations and empires failed over the course of world history. The structure of the US Constitution, is followed, was created to prevent that and to protect the US from human nature.
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Your so called exhaustive research was done more than 200 years ago. In a time when white men thought themselves superior to coloured or women. Not so much exhaustive but more incline to biased. As for "created to prevent that and to protect the US from human nature.". Can you tell me how you manage to keep a straight face saying that while having an idiot as a president?
 
Tennyson said:
The two counties cannot be compared. One is a unitary form of government, and the other is a compact between sovereign states federalism form of government.
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True, it was not a comparison i was trying to make. I was asked for a reason to promote an unwritten constitution and gave one. The only real comparison to be made is that the present american constitution should be in a museum as is the magna carta.
 
soylentgreen said:
Ok a link and i can provie more.
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-areas/constitutional-law/why-we-dont-need-a-written-constitution





And that is exactly what you are doing. Refusing to look at any other example of governance because of a myopic view of the american system.
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With all due respect, I'm not the one refusing to look at another example of governance, and taking a myopic view of my own country's system of government. I don't expect you to agree with me. It's not that you disagree, it's that you bury your head in the sand instead of considering that other countries have unique political cultures that may require a different way of doing things; all the while referring to any opposing argument as "irrelevant". You also seem to take the view that we're idiots who worship the 18th century and can't think critically. I'm very curious as to how many Americans you know or have spoken with.

The authors of the federal constitution knew the political landscape WOULD change. They wrote into the constitution the ability to change it. Have you read the U.S. constitution before? It contains some blanks here and there, not unlike building a house with a foundation large enough to accommodate additions to be built onto it. It also contains the method (see Article V) by which the people, via the state legislatures, can entirely bypass Congress and rewrite the thing wholesale, if they wanted to. Other parts of the constitution allow flexibility for certain things like the definition of suffrage, which changed radically over the years. In fact, we started to "democratize" the electorate several decades before the UK--with its apparently more flexible, unwritten constitution--did so.

Interesting article you showed me, by the way. I can understand why you don't have a written one. But we do, and we needed one, and still need one. A written constitution can be inflexible, but it does not have to be; nor is it automatically inflexible BECAUSE it is written. The flaw in your reasoning is that because something is written down it's inflexible. If you took the time to study it a bit, and objectively so, you might understand that your argument is as fallacious as your attitude toward the uniqueness of other political systems.
 
soylentgreen said:
Your so called exhaustive research was done more than 200 years ago. In a time when white men thought themselves superior to coloured or women. Not so much exhaustive but more incline to biased. As for "created to prevent that and to protect the US from human nature.". Can you tell me how you manage to keep a straight face saying that while having an idiot as a president?
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There is nothing in your post that is remotely related to my post.
 
soylentgreen said:
True, it was not a comparison i was trying to make. I was asked for a reason to promote an unwritten constitution and gave one. The only real comparison to be made is that the present american constitution should be in a museum as is the magna carta.
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You sound a lot like King Goerge, but fortunately we resolved that issue.
 
Tennyson said:
The two counties cannot be compared. One is a unitary form of government, and the other is a compact between sovereign states federalism form of government.
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We are sovereign, but our states are not. Article 2 of the articles of confederation was about sovereign states. It, obviously, is no longer in effect.

There is no mention of sovereign states in the constitution.
 
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Howard the Duck said:
We are sovereign, but our states are not. Article 2 of the articles of confederation was about sovereign states. It, obviously, is no longer in effect.

There is no mention of sovereign states in the constitution.
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The Constitution is a compact between sovereign states that creates a federalism form of government.
 
Howard the Duck said:
... where they sacrifice their sovereign status.
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Provide the evidence that rebuts that the Constitution was created as a confederation and compact of sovereign states.
 
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