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When I was young, the thought of a "Constitution" requiring a supermajority to modify seemed arcane. "If it's the will of the people, let it be done." Today, I

When I was young, the thought of a "Constitution" requiring a supermajority to modify seemed arcane. "If it's the will of the people, let it be done." Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. Sadly I do not see the UK/AU/NZ/CAN creating their own Constitutions. Those in power understand it would limit their power to an unacceptable degree.

mantas 4y ago
There are ways around Constitution. Constitutional courts do fun things to accommodate sitting governments. But at least it makes the process very difficult and prolong it enough to give public some glimpse. Well, in most cases.
jgardner100 4y ago
Each of those countries you list already has a constitution. The Australian constitution requires both the majority of the people and the majority of the states to all votes yes in a referendum to the change. It isn't easy to modify.
YPPH 4y ago
The US Constitution is not much to be jealous about. In Australia, if people are unhappy with laws, they can change the government, who in turn can change the laws. Meanwhile, in the US, the validity of laws is decided based upon the views of unelected bureaucrats appointed by past Presidents. The US has the highly undesirable situation of (1) the possibility of a deadlocked President (because Congress does not support them) (2) the possibility of a deadlocked legislature (because SCOTUS doesn't support them). The Australian Constitution completely sidesteps these conundrums. A bad PM can be ousted in a day. The High Court avoids getting into Constitutional rights disputes except in limited circumstances, such as undue burdens upon the implied freedom of political communication. I consider this significantly more desirable and the US offers nothing to be jealous of.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  >A bad PM can be ousted in a day. By whom? The parliament that confirmed him as PM? The parliament where the PM's party almost always holds the most seats? A parliamentary system essentially combines the executive and legislative powers to one party.
  - Jedd 4y ago
    By the House (of Representatives), or in extraordinary circumstances by the head of state (currently the regent of the Commonwealth) but typically that requires the former to formally seek such a remedy from the latter. I believe by convention the deputy PM in Australia is necessarily a member of this group (also called the Lower House), though our PM could in theory be a member of the upper house (aka the Senate). I don't believe that's ever been the case, though. Fascinatingly our constitution mentions the role of Prime Minister precisely zero times -- it was assumed to be understood.
    - jaza 4y ago
      Going purely by our Constitution, technically all Ministers of State - that's all 42 people currently listed at https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/parliamentary_handbook/current_ministry_list https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_depart... - equally share Executive power (and technically they themselves have no power, they can only advise the Queen, and her representative, the Governor-General, who are the ones with the actual power). However, as with everything in the Westminster system, the written law is only part of the picture, and by convention, we have one Minister to rule them all, and he/she exercises actual Executive power.
  - cookie_monsta 4y ago
    > By whom? Haha. You could ask: Gough Whitlam Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard Tony Abbot Malcolm Turnbull
  - martin8412 4y ago
    Technically speaking, by Queen Elizabeth.
aceofspades19 4y ago
Canada does have a constitution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982 so I don't understand what you are talking about.
cookie_monsta 4y ago
I think you might be thinking of the Bill of Rights, which is the thing that really sets the US apart from those other countries you mentioned. Even the most demonic de facto dictatorships can have constitutions
- peeters 4y ago
  Canada has had a Bill of Rights enshrined in its constitution since 1982, it's just called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-12.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-12.html The most controversial thing about Canada's Charter isn't the language of the rights itself, it's that to get the support of the provinces it included what's known as the "notwithstanding clause", whereby a province can choose to expressly ignore parts of the charter in laws it enacts.
bitwize 4y ago
> No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. And yet, Roe was overturned. Gay rights are next.
- krapp 4y ago
  To be fair, Trump being able to stack the Supreme Court the way he did was the result of happenstance and decades of effort by the GOP. They did face an extreme uphill battle, but they were able to surmount it. The real problem here is that the Supreme Court is a lifetime political appointment and, as long as their decisions have support in Congress, they're unimpeachable.
- andyferris 4y ago
  I’m still confused why the legislature didn’t deal with this issue. I have a theory that in the absence of the Roe ruling, publicity of outcomes would have forced the politicians to create somewhat appropriate rules. E.g. in Australia we recently reached the situation that both abortion and euthanasia are permitted by all states. I never considered it something the courts should weigh in on - progressive governments allowed members bills and conscience votes. It’s possible there are US states where the ruling politicians don’t get rotated (voted) out like they are guaranteed to here (eventually) and the legislature is always conservative, but there’s always the possibility of federal laws.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    The legislature has dealt with this issue by passing strong, specific laws regarding abortion in many of the states - with quite opposite conditions depending on the state. And it's not because of lack of "rotating" politicians, quite a few of them got elected on because they promised to prohibit abortions, getting votes from the state majority of conservative voters who considered a strict prohibition entirely appropriate. The federal legislature, on the other hand has it a bit trickier, because despite the much grown influence of federal government using the commerce clause, it does technically seem that this kind of policy is something that according to USA constitutional principles gets to be decided on a state level.
  - 4y ago
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. Me too. In my country we've got politicians proposing amendments to the constitution every other day like it was nothing, it happens frequently enough for there to be jargon and acronyms for it: Constitutional Amendment Proposals. USA at least has a solid ideological foundation to stand on, even though its government violates the rights of americans on a daily basis.
- hestefisk 4y ago
  Roe v Wade much? I’m Australian and, whilst the we have huge issues with lack of a “bill of rights”, at least we don’t have conservative judges running the country.
  - michaelscott 4y ago
    It's about the underlying structure of the legal system, not one particular law or political leaning you don't agree with. The checks and balances system in the US is definitely far more resilient than any of the commonwealth countries, Roe v Wade notwithstanding.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > at least we don’t have conservative judges running the country. Oh we have that here as well, though I'm not sure about "conservative". Where I live, the supreme federal court is the legislative power. People vote representatives to propose laws but the judges of the supreme court are the ones who ultimately define what the law means in practice it and they use that power to legislate in what has been termed "judicial activism". I've seen cases where the judges openly acknowledged in writing that according to the law the defendant was innocent, then proceeded to condemn them anyway because what they did offended their personal morals and therefore "deserved repression".
  - salawat 4y ago
    Roe v. Wade was judicial fiat from the time it was laid. The Judiciary carved it out as precedent, for the duration of that particular set of Justices in the Court. It's as ephemeral in a sense as an executive order. The way the system is intended to work is that such things should be enacted through the legislature or a Constitutional convention. If it is universally desired to elevate something above reproach (and shoddy prevention that is given the treatment of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th Amendments in general), it'd make it into the Federal Constitution to clarify it. Interestingly however, the 10th Amendment explicitly makes implicit that any freedom not explicitly carved out in either a State or Federal Constitution is granted to the People. So somewhere along the way we've seriously lost sight of how things were intended to work. The American Constitution was intended to primarily enumerate limits on Government, not on those of the People. Therefore, positive assertions or explicit "People have X right" is actually in a sense a form of regression from what the document was intended to embody. Which again, is primarily "no government, no matter how much easier it'd make your existence, thou shalt not go there", and "no States, we all talked about this, you shan't go there either".
raxxorraxor 4y ago
> Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. It isn't perfect at all and maybe fallen out of time a bit, but it is better than that of any other country I know (I am not for the US). But even today you have idiots trying to undermine it (for example in regards to the right to bear arms). I can live without arms and think it has many advantages, but the sleazy lawyer militia arguments brought forward are signs of mental inhibition. With such people a constitution like that would never have been possible.
- Nitramp 4y ago
  > It isn't perfect at all and maybe fallen out of time a bit, but it is better than that of any other country I know (I am not for the US). That's a very surprising take to me. Some more obvious problems with the US constitution are highly ambiguous clauses (right to bear arms vs militias), unclear powers assigned to parts of the government (could Pence have legally decided on the electors to make Trump win? what's the exact succession of powers?), an election system causing imbalanced voting power (how many senators per state vs population, first-past-the-post vote), important rights left undefined (right to privacy vs the abortion issue), and many many more issues. These really are just the recent things that come to mind. These problems also don't seem scholarly, they appear to have substantial impact on political reality. The US constitution was certainly a huge achievement for the 18th century. There's - unsurprisingly - been a lot of progress in constitutional theory in the 235 years after though, and it seems like it is a massive liability for the US by now.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    This is an extremely narrow perspective on contemporary issues. I think laws in harmony with the constitution would need to answer these questions. As I said, I don't believe it to be perfect, but I have severe doubts current powers could come up with something better. The question of the number of representatives by state is a political one. Look at the EU. Pretty much the same. Otherwise a union would not be possible. This is a form of minority protection. There is valid criticism for that but said criticism should first understand why it is the way it is. There is also valid criticism of "the winner takes it all" approaches of course. These issues aren't even disconnected here. Still, the US constitution is pretty great. I don't know of one that is better. I don't believe the current political climate could improve it significantly and I cannot blame it for not having a direct answer to any legal question. A constitution that might have that would be extremely long and probably extremely bad.
cyphar 4y ago
> Sadly I do not see the UK/AU/NZ/CAN creating their own Constitutions. Australia and Canada both have constitutions (I don't know about the Canadian one, but the Australian one was definitely written by Australians), and while NZ doesn't have a codified constitution it does have several treaties and laws which effectively form a constitution in all but name (in particular they have the concept of entrenched laws which require more than a simple majority in parliament to amend -- though as far as I can tell, not all laws considered part of the New Zealand Constitution are entrenched). I don't know what gave you the impression we don't have a constitution. > No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. In Australia it's even harder to change the constitution, so if that's something you like then you should love the Australian Constitution even more! You need a double majority of the public to vote in favour of the change in a nationwide referendum. In the US, the constitution can be changed without any public votes or input at all (since it only requires state legislatures to ratify the amendment).
- Gareth321 4y ago
  >Australia and Canada both have constitutions While this is technically true, it does not appear that either guarantee the rights of citizens to speak freely, especially when the speech is objectionable. When I lament the lack of a Constitution, I lament a Constitution which permits us the same inalienable rights. Both Australia and Canada place harsh restrictions on speech.
  - cyphar 4y ago
    It's not "technically" true, it's simply true. As for enshrining rights, Canada has the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms[1] which is a constitutional document that includes the freedom of expression. New Zealand has the Bill of Rights Act[2] which includes freedom of expression. As mentioned before, it's not entrenched law (though it was originally intended to be) but since most countries don't have constitutional bills of rights, this is hardly unusual. As for Australia, I personally do think we should have a bill of rights of some kind (currently the basis of freedom of political speech is based on a High Court ruling about the Constitution's preamble which is in my view incredibly flimsy). I personally wouldn't model it on the US Constitution -- I would base it on the NZ Bill of Rights, but that's a minor detail. However, it's simply not true to say that those countries don't have constitutions when you actually want to say that they don't have constitutional protections of certain rights (and in the case of Canada, they actually do!) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms#Fundamental_freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Bill_of_Rights_Act_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Bill_of_Rights_Act...

mantas 4y ago

There are ways around Constitution. Constitutional courts do fun things to accommodate sitting governments. But at least it makes the process very difficult and prolong it enough to give public some glimpse. Well, in most cases.

jgardner100 4y ago

Each of those countries you list already has a constitution. The Australian constitution requires both the majority of the people and the majority of the states to all votes yes in a referendum to the change. It isn't easy to modify.

YPPH 4y ago

The US Constitution is not much to be jealous about. In Australia, if people are unhappy with laws, they can change the government, who in turn can change the laws. Meanwhile, in the US, the validity of laws is decided based upon the views of unelected bureaucrats appointed by past Presidents. The US has the highly undesirable situation of (1) the possibility of a deadlocked President (because Congress does not support them) (2) the possibility of a deadlocked legislature (because SCOTUS doesn't support them). The Australian Constitution completely sidesteps these conundrums. A bad PM can be ousted in a day. The High Court avoids getting into Constitutional rights disputes except in limited circumstances, such as undue burdens upon the implied freedom of political communication. I consider this significantly more desirable and the US offers nothing to be jealous of.

Aerroon 4y ago
>A bad PM can be ousted in a day. By whom? The parliament that confirmed him as PM? The parliament where the PM's party almost always holds the most seats? A parliamentary system essentially combines the executive and legislative powers to one party.
- Jedd 4y ago
  By the House (of Representatives), or in extraordinary circumstances by the head of state (currently the regent of the Commonwealth) but typically that requires the former to formally seek such a remedy from the latter. I believe by convention the deputy PM in Australia is necessarily a member of this group (also called the Lower House), though our PM could in theory be a member of the upper house (aka the Senate). I don't believe that's ever been the case, though. Fascinatingly our constitution mentions the role of Prime Minister precisely zero times -- it was assumed to be understood.
  - jaza 4y ago
    Going purely by our Constitution, technically all Ministers of State - that's all 42 people currently listed at https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/parliamentary_handbook/current_ministry_list https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_depart... - equally share Executive power (and technically they themselves have no power, they can only advise the Queen, and her representative, the Governor-General, who are the ones with the actual power). However, as with everything in the Westminster system, the written law is only part of the picture, and by convention, we have one Minister to rule them all, and he/she exercises actual Executive power.
- cookie_monsta 4y ago
  > By whom? Haha. You could ask: Gough Whitlam Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard Tony Abbot Malcolm Turnbull
- martin8412 4y ago
  Technically speaking, by Queen Elizabeth.

aceofspades19 4y ago

Canada does have a constitution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982 so I don't understand what you are talking about.

cookie_monsta 4y ago

I think you might be thinking of the Bill of Rights, which is the thing that really sets the US apart from those other countries you mentioned. Even the most demonic de facto dictatorships can have constitutions

peeters 4y ago
Canada has had a Bill of Rights enshrined in its constitution since 1982, it's just called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-12.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-12.html The most controversial thing about Canada's Charter isn't the language of the rights itself, it's that to get the support of the provinces it included what's known as the "notwithstanding clause", whereby a province can choose to expressly ignore parts of the charter in laws it enacts.

bitwize 4y ago

> No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. And yet, Roe was overturned. Gay rights are next.

krapp 4y ago
To be fair, Trump being able to stack the Supreme Court the way he did was the result of happenstance and decades of effort by the GOP. They did face an extreme uphill battle, but they were able to surmount it. The real problem here is that the Supreme Court is a lifetime political appointment and, as long as their decisions have support in Congress, they're unimpeachable.
andyferris 4y ago
I’m still confused why the legislature didn’t deal with this issue. I have a theory that in the absence of the Roe ruling, publicity of outcomes would have forced the politicians to create somewhat appropriate rules. E.g. in Australia we recently reached the situation that both abortion and euthanasia are permitted by all states. I never considered it something the courts should weigh in on - progressive governments allowed members bills and conscience votes. It’s possible there are US states where the ruling politicians don’t get rotated (voted) out like they are guaranteed to here (eventually) and the legislature is always conservative, but there’s always the possibility of federal laws.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  The legislature has dealt with this issue by passing strong, specific laws regarding abortion in many of the states - with quite opposite conditions depending on the state. And it's not because of lack of "rotating" politicians, quite a few of them got elected on because they promised to prohibit abortions, getting votes from the state majority of conservative voters who considered a strict prohibition entirely appropriate. The federal legislature, on the other hand has it a bit trickier, because despite the much grown influence of federal government using the commerce clause, it does technically seem that this kind of policy is something that according to USA constitutional principles gets to be decided on a state level.
- 4y ago

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. Me too. In my country we've got politicians proposing amendments to the constitution every other day like it was nothing, it happens frequently enough for there to be jargon and acronyms for it: Constitutional Amendment Proposals. USA at least has a solid ideological foundation to stand on, even though its government violates the rights of americans on a daily basis.

hestefisk 4y ago
Roe v Wade much? I’m Australian and, whilst the we have huge issues with lack of a “bill of rights”, at least we don’t have conservative judges running the country.
- michaelscott 4y ago
  It's about the underlying structure of the legal system, not one particular law or political leaning you don't agree with. The checks and balances system in the US is definitely far more resilient than any of the commonwealth countries, Roe v Wade notwithstanding.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > at least we don’t have conservative judges running the country. Oh we have that here as well, though I'm not sure about "conservative". Where I live, the supreme federal court is the legislative power. People vote representatives to propose laws but the judges of the supreme court are the ones who ultimately define what the law means in practice it and they use that power to legislate in what has been termed "judicial activism". I've seen cases where the judges openly acknowledged in writing that according to the law the defendant was innocent, then proceeded to condemn them anyway because what they did offended their personal morals and therefore "deserved repression".
- salawat 4y ago
  Roe v. Wade was judicial fiat from the time it was laid. The Judiciary carved it out as precedent, for the duration of that particular set of Justices in the Court. It's as ephemeral in a sense as an executive order. The way the system is intended to work is that such things should be enacted through the legislature or a Constitutional convention. If it is universally desired to elevate something above reproach (and shoddy prevention that is given the treatment of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th Amendments in general), it'd make it into the Federal Constitution to clarify it. Interestingly however, the 10th Amendment explicitly makes implicit that any freedom not explicitly carved out in either a State or Federal Constitution is granted to the People. So somewhere along the way we've seriously lost sight of how things were intended to work. The American Constitution was intended to primarily enumerate limits on Government, not on those of the People. Therefore, positive assertions or explicit "People have X right" is actually in a sense a form of regression from what the document was intended to embody. Which again, is primarily "no government, no matter how much easier it'd make your existence, thou shalt not go there", and "no States, we all talked about this, you shan't go there either".

raxxorraxor 4y ago

> Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. It isn't perfect at all and maybe fallen out of time a bit, but it is better than that of any other country I know (I am not for the US). But even today you have idiots trying to undermine it (for example in regards to the right to bear arms). I can live without arms and think it has many advantages, but the sleazy lawyer militia arguments brought forward are signs of mental inhibition. With such people a constitution like that would never have been possible.

Nitramp 4y ago
> It isn't perfect at all and maybe fallen out of time a bit, but it is better than that of any other country I know (I am not for the US). That's a very surprising take to me. Some more obvious problems with the US constitution are highly ambiguous clauses (right to bear arms vs militias), unclear powers assigned to parts of the government (could Pence have legally decided on the electors to make Trump win? what's the exact succession of powers?), an election system causing imbalanced voting power (how many senators per state vs population, first-past-the-post vote), important rights left undefined (right to privacy vs the abortion issue), and many many more issues. These really are just the recent things that come to mind. These problems also don't seem scholarly, they appear to have substantial impact on political reality. The US constitution was certainly a huge achievement for the 18th century. There's - unsurprisingly - been a lot of progress in constitutional theory in the 235 years after though, and it seems like it is a massive liability for the US by now.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  This is an extremely narrow perspective on contemporary issues. I think laws in harmony with the constitution would need to answer these questions. As I said, I don't believe it to be perfect, but I have severe doubts current powers could come up with something better. The question of the number of representatives by state is a political one. Look at the EU. Pretty much the same. Otherwise a union would not be possible. This is a form of minority protection. There is valid criticism for that but said criticism should first understand why it is the way it is. There is also valid criticism of "the winner takes it all" approaches of course. These issues aren't even disconnected here. Still, the US constitution is pretty great. I don't know of one that is better. I don't believe the current political climate could improve it significantly and I cannot blame it for not having a direct answer to any legal question. A constitution that might have that would be extremely long and probably extremely bad.

cyphar 4y ago

> Sadly I do not see the UK/AU/NZ/CAN creating their own Constitutions. Australia and Canada both have constitutions (I don't know about the Canadian one, but the Australian one was definitely written by Australians), and while NZ doesn't have a codified constitution it does have several treaties and laws which effectively form a constitution in all but name (in particular they have the concept of entrenched laws which require more than a simple majority in parliament to amend -- though as far as I can tell, not all laws considered part of the New Zealand Constitution are entrenched). I don't know what gave you the impression we don't have a constitution. > No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. In Australia it's even harder to change the constitution, so if that's something you like then you should love the Australian Constitution even more! You need a double majority of the public to vote in favour of the change in a nationwide referendum. In the US, the constitution can be changed without any public votes or input at all (since it only requires state legislatures to ratify the amendment).

Gareth321 4y ago
>Australia and Canada both have constitutions While this is technically true, it does not appear that either guarantee the rights of citizens to speak freely, especially when the speech is objectionable. When I lament the lack of a Constitution, I lament a Constitution which permits us the same inalienable rights. Both Australia and Canada place harsh restrictions on speech.
- cyphar 4y ago
  It's not "technically" true, it's simply true. As for enshrining rights, Canada has the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms[1] which is a constitutional document that includes the freedom of expression. New Zealand has the Bill of Rights Act[2] which includes freedom of expression. As mentioned before, it's not entrenched law (though it was originally intended to be) but since most countries don't have constitutional bills of rights, this is hardly unusual. As for Australia, I personally do think we should have a bill of rights of some kind (currently the basis of freedom of political speech is based on a High Court ruling about the Constitution's preamble which is in my view incredibly flimsy). I personally wouldn't model it on the US Constitution -- I would base it on the NZ Bill of Rights, but that's a minor detail. However, it's simply not true to say that those countries don't have constitutions when you actually want to say that they don't have constitutional protections of certain rights (and in the case of Canada, they actually do!) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms#Fundamental_freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Bill_of_Rights_Act_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Bill_of_Rights_Act...