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The US Constitution is, without dispute, constructed as a whitelist of enumerated powers for the federal government along with a blacklist of prohibited actions
by gwright 11y ago
The US Constitution is, without dispute, constructed as a whitelist of enumerated powers for the federal government along with a blacklist of prohibited actions that constrain even those enumerated powers.
You can't really understand many constitutional debates without understanding this core formulation of the U.S. Constitution.
Attempts to interpret the whitelist in such a way that it effectively becomes "allow anything" is a good way of understanding the criticisms of expansive federal programs.
Similar attempts to minimize the blacklist portion is a good way of understanding the criticism of expansive police and military programs (i.e. war on drugs, war on terrorism, etc.)
- emodendroket 11y agoThat's not really "without dispute" at all. From the very beginning there was dispute about what things the federal government should do, and the Constitution is open-ended enough to allow quite different interpretations.
- gwright 11y agoYou seem to be making a category error. The overall logical structure of the Constitution is something categorically different than the nature of the enumerated powers or of the prohibitions listed in the bill of rights. My use of "without dispute" is in regard to that overall logical structure and I do believe that the structure is quite clear and does not lend itself to 'quite different interpretations'. Of course the appropriate interpretation of particular enumerated powers is often debated as well as what the "federal government should do", but that is not what I was referring to with "without dispute".