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What would it mean for the US Constitution not to apply to a law within the US? For a federal law, either it's within Congress's specifically enumerated and li
by jkaplowitz 9y ago
What would it mean for the US Constitution not to apply to a law within the US?
For a federal law, either it's within Congress's specifically enumerated and limited powers (as interpreted by SCOTUS) and therefore valid, or else the law is invalid.
For a state law, the US Supreme Court will only base their ruling on the US Constitution if anything legally binding at the federal level (including but not limited to the Constitution) forbids or allows that state law.
Otherwise, SCOTUS and every other court will defer on state law to the state Constitution as interpreted by state courts, but from a federal constitutional perspective, states can pass whatever laws aren't federally forbidden.
- lucozade 9y agoAs an obvious example, the 5th Amendment blatantly didn't have anything to do with passwords. The whole idea is a bit silly. The sensible thing to do would be to say that the Constitution has nothing much to say on many issues relating to modern technology and deal with it accordingly. Same goes with guns. If you want everyone to be armed then fine. That's your prerogative. But the Constitution clearly didn't mean for everyone and their mom to be tooled up with semi-automatic weaponry. I mean, just how legal are militias in the US? Because they're the reason you should be carrying. It was clearly a document of its time. And one of international importance. But the religious zeal to which it is adhered to is highly questionable. Now, it's not like we're perfect in the UK or anything. But if someone tried to justify something to do with smartphones or terrorism by referencing Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, we'd probably take a step back and give them a napkin for the mouth frothing.