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Have you read many other founding documents? Flowery language about the people and claims about rights are common even amongst states which are - in practice -

Have you read many other founding documents? Flowery language about the people and claims about rights are common even amongst states which are - in practice - the worst oligarchies or dictatorships, and I can't think of any democratic constitutions containing as an egregious a provision in favour of the rich as the Three Fifths Compromise. (In fairness to the US Constitution, claims about inalienable rights were relative novelty at the time, and a lot of the flowery language and claims about rights in other countries' constitutions are borrowed from it and its Enlightenment inspirations) The one feature of its design which has helped it persist is that it's quite heavily weighted against change (federal structure, separation of powers, supermajorities for amendments) but in some contexts that looks more like a bug than a feature. But overall I'd say its continuity is primarily the result of simple fact the US has existed for longer and under less external pressure than most states than anything particularly outstanding about the text or polity design. That and the Confederacy losing. The quasi-Biblical reverence most Americans treat it with doesn't hurt either, but then some of us Brits get misty eyed at the thought of the Magna Carta, and that's a load of waffle about Cinque Ports and Earls' heirs!

TMWNN 4y ago
>I can't think of any democratic constitutions containing as an egregious a provision in favour of the rich as the Three Fifths Compromise. Ah yes, yet another person who presumes to pontificate on the Three Fifths Clause without actually having thought about the actual consequences. The clause reduced slave states' power.
- notahacker 4y ago
  It didn't reduce slave states' powers as much the alternatives of not permitting slavery (which would have been actually consistent with the preamble...) or not counting slaves towards the level of representation their masters got in Congress at all
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >It didn't reduce slave states' powers as much the alternatives of not permitting slavery (which would have been actually consistent with the preamble...) Gosh, it would have been nice if the US had never had legal slavery. Thank you for that keen insight. >or not counting slaves towards the level of representation their masters got in Congress at all As you yourself said it was a compromise, between what the free and slave states wanted. Just like everything else in the Constitution, such as the Electoral College being a compromise between the large and small states. Such compromises made the Constitution possible, which in turn made possible the Bill of Rights and the post-Civil War amendments that ended said legal slavery. The larger point is that the clause was not the means by which slaveholders wrote into the Constitution what their view of the value of a slave's life was, again because the clause reduced their political power.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      That's a lot of words to expend basically reinforcing my original point (and refuting a claim that I never made... obviously slaveowners tended to consider slaves lives as far less than three fifths of a non-slave except when it came to inflating their voting power in Congress) Of course it was a compromise and sometimes compromise renders evils necessary, but codifying the existence of slaves into the constitution obviously made the high ideals spoken of in the preamble look more than a little insincere, and the three fifths clause explicitly granted power to the slaveholders over the more sensible alternative weighting system for Congressional Representatives (number of voters/adults/free people) campaigned for by abolitionists at the time. If we're comparing the US Constitution to other constitutions written under their own unique pressures, its a clear case of the US Constitution not being drafted with more commitment to equality under the law. The fact that it was ultimately rectified after a war which killed 1 in 50 Americans isn't a particularly strong argument in favour of it being an effective compromise either.

TMWNN 4y ago

>I can't think of any democratic constitutions containing as an egregious a provision in favour of the rich as the Three Fifths Compromise. Ah yes, yet another person who presumes to pontificate on the Three Fifths Clause without actually having thought about the actual consequences. The clause reduced slave states' power.

notahacker 4y ago
It didn't reduce slave states' powers as much the alternatives of not permitting slavery (which would have been actually consistent with the preamble...) or not counting slaves towards the level of representation their masters got in Congress at all
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >It didn't reduce slave states' powers as much the alternatives of not permitting slavery (which would have been actually consistent with the preamble...) Gosh, it would have been nice if the US had never had legal slavery. Thank you for that keen insight. >or not counting slaves towards the level of representation their masters got in Congress at all As you yourself said it was a compromise, between what the free and slave states wanted. Just like everything else in the Constitution, such as the Electoral College being a compromise between the large and small states. Such compromises made the Constitution possible, which in turn made possible the Bill of Rights and the post-Civil War amendments that ended said legal slavery. The larger point is that the clause was not the means by which slaveholders wrote into the Constitution what their view of the value of a slave's life was, again because the clause reduced their political power.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    That's a lot of words to expend basically reinforcing my original point (and refuting a claim that I never made... obviously slaveowners tended to consider slaves lives as far less than three fifths of a non-slave except when it came to inflating their voting power in Congress) Of course it was a compromise and sometimes compromise renders evils necessary, but codifying the existence of slaves into the constitution obviously made the high ideals spoken of in the preamble look more than a little insincere, and the three fifths clause explicitly granted power to the slaveholders over the more sensible alternative weighting system for Congressional Representatives (number of voters/adults/free people) campaigned for by abolitionists at the time. If we're comparing the US Constitution to other constitutions written under their own unique pressures, its a clear case of the US Constitution not being drafted with more commitment to equality under the law. The fact that it was ultimately rectified after a war which killed 1 in 50 Americans isn't a particularly strong argument in favour of it being an effective compromise either.