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The US was actually founded with the idea that this should be done to the entire constitution every couple of decades.

by wizzwizz4 5y ago

malwarebytess 5y ago
After all, why shouldn't each generation choose how it is to govern itself? Sins of the Fathers and so on...
- dexterdog 5y ago
  Because each generation doesn't just govern itself. Also, how old should that generation be before they can decide which fences to take down without understanding whey they were put up in the first place?
fragileone 5y ago
[citation needed]
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whether-the-american-constitution-is-binding-on-those-who-were-not-born-at-the-time-it-was-signed-and-agreed-to-1789 https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whethe... > The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right. I think Thomas Jefferson is a reputable source for my assertion.
  - benglish11 5y ago
    Thomas Jefferson’s opinion on this issue doesn’t mean “The US was founded on this principle”. If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      > If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution. If that were true, we wouldn't have had the first block of amendments. There's plenty of stuff that didn't make it into the original constitution because the founders thought it was obvious.
    - musingsole 5y ago
      There's a long standing philosophy that pretty much any and all ideas in the founder's heads are viable as founding principles. Otherwise what good is mining their journals and letters and their acquaintances journals and letters in a continuous attempt to understand what they thought was critical for a society to function. This largely ignores the rest of society and what they were thinking. From the first perspective, these are all ideas that got smuggled in.
      - kevinmchugh 5y ago
        It also ignores the significant disagreements the founders had amongst themselves.
  - comicjk 5y ago
    To some extent this famous quote is just sour grapes: Jefferson wasn't much involved in the drafting or passing of the US Constitution, so naturally he was not as attached to it as the other founders. Note that this was a letter written from France.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    This one of the principles of parliamentary sovereignty in the UK: No Parliament can bind a future parliament. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty
mindslight 5y ago
That's utterly incompatible with Common Law, unfortunately.
- musingsole 5y ago
  How so? Every so often the foundations of common law get to be re-evaluated which could be disastrous. But in practice it's likely the foundations would be similar cycle to cycle. Further, to the degree that the roots of rulings change due to a new constitution, don't those ruling trees need to change? The constitution changing is a signal that the people, their needs and their values have changed and so should all rulings based on those ideas. --As an aside, I'm biased against common law. I appreciate my ancestors but I question accepting all of their prior decisions as taken until proven otherwise.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    For the same reason that you can't just make changes to a codebase without understanding its structure. Rewriting the Constitution also means throwing away 200 years of Supreme Court decisions. It's easy to envision invaliding precedents that rely on things that have changed, but the process of creating those precedents takes so long nobody really knows what the new law means until it's tested. Furthermore, the arguments to invalidate them are also going to be in the form of more legal arguments, so you're adding another whole dimension to the problem. Given how opaque the law is to the average person right now, I'd say we're already at the limit. FWIW I'm biased against common law too, because it seems to take what is actually policy and brand it as if it were universal truth.
musingsole 5y ago
I believe Jefferson abandoned the idea after seeing how hard passing the first one was, too much overhead. I've always fantasized about the idea as a way to guarantee continuous buy-in from the living population of a community.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
Apparently the traditional law of Iceland required a guy to appear every year and recite the law. Whatever he forgot to include was no longer the law.
- godelski 5y ago
  Honestly this seems prime for abuse, letting that one guy decide to "forget" what he doesn't like.
godelski 5y ago
Ironically the US has the oldest constitution of any sovereign state[0]. Beats Norway (the second oldest) by 26 years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions
- zero_iq 5y ago
  Depends what you're counting as a constitution. San Marino has the US beat for oldest written and still active constitutional documents by 190 years. The UK has an uncodified constitution that predates the US by over 500 years, originally founded on the Magna Carta, signed in 1215.

The US was actually founded with the idea that this should be done to the entire constitution every couple of decades.

malwarebytess 5y ago

After all, why shouldn't each generation choose how it is to govern itself? Sins of the Fathers and so on...

dexterdog 5y ago
Because each generation doesn't just govern itself. Also, how old should that generation be before they can decide which fences to take down without understanding whey they were put up in the first place?

fragileone 5y ago

[citation needed]

wizzwizz4 5y ago
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whether-the-american-constitution-is-binding-on-those-who-were-not-born-at-the-time-it-was-signed-and-agreed-to-1789 https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whethe... > The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right. I think Thomas Jefferson is a reputable source for my assertion.
- benglish11 5y ago
  Thomas Jefferson’s opinion on this issue doesn’t mean “The US was founded on this principle”. If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution. If that were true, we wouldn't have had the first block of amendments. There's plenty of stuff that didn't make it into the original constitution because the founders thought it was obvious.
  - musingsole 5y ago
    There's a long standing philosophy that pretty much any and all ideas in the founder's heads are viable as founding principles. Otherwise what good is mining their journals and letters and their acquaintances journals and letters in a continuous attempt to understand what they thought was critical for a society to function. This largely ignores the rest of society and what they were thinking. From the first perspective, these are all ideas that got smuggled in.
    - kevinmchugh 5y ago
      It also ignores the significant disagreements the founders had amongst themselves.
- comicjk 5y ago
  To some extent this famous quote is just sour grapes: Jefferson wasn't much involved in the drafting or passing of the US Constitution, so naturally he was not as attached to it as the other founders. Note that this was a letter written from France.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  This one of the principles of parliamentary sovereignty in the UK: No Parliament can bind a future parliament. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty

mindslight 5y ago

That's utterly incompatible with Common Law, unfortunately.

musingsole 5y ago
How so? Every so often the foundations of common law get to be re-evaluated which could be disastrous. But in practice it's likely the foundations would be similar cycle to cycle. Further, to the degree that the roots of rulings change due to a new constitution, don't those ruling trees need to change? The constitution changing is a signal that the people, their needs and their values have changed and so should all rulings based on those ideas. --As an aside, I'm biased against common law. I appreciate my ancestors but I question accepting all of their prior decisions as taken until proven otherwise.
- mindslight 5y ago
  For the same reason that you can't just make changes to a codebase without understanding its structure. Rewriting the Constitution also means throwing away 200 years of Supreme Court decisions. It's easy to envision invaliding precedents that rely on things that have changed, but the process of creating those precedents takes so long nobody really knows what the new law means until it's tested. Furthermore, the arguments to invalidate them are also going to be in the form of more legal arguments, so you're adding another whole dimension to the problem. Given how opaque the law is to the average person right now, I'd say we're already at the limit. FWIW I'm biased against common law too, because it seems to take what is actually policy and brand it as if it were universal truth.

musingsole 5y ago

I believe Jefferson abandoned the idea after seeing how hard passing the first one was, too much overhead. I've always fantasized about the idea as a way to guarantee continuous buy-in from the living population of a community.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

Apparently the traditional law of Iceland required a guy to appear every year and recite the law. Whatever he forgot to include was no longer the law.

godelski 5y ago
Honestly this seems prime for abuse, letting that one guy decide to "forget" what he doesn't like.

godelski 5y ago

Ironically the US has the oldest constitution of any sovereign state[0]. Beats Norway (the second oldest) by 26 years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions

zero_iq 5y ago
Depends what you're counting as a constitution. San Marino has the US beat for oldest written and still active constitutional documents by 190 years. The UK has an uncodified constitution that predates the US by over 500 years, originally founded on the Magna Carta, signed in 1215.