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Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19

Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19 years. Clearly they don't by default. By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized. Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.

galangalalgol 4y ago
In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".
- tekknik 4y ago
  How is the second amendment ambiguous? It’s one of the more clear written rights we have.
  - jjk166 4y ago
    What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so? The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error. Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require). As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.
      - tekknik 4y ago
        How does one person think they know more than the group of people involved in writing it? Your ego is quite strong. There are no gramatical errors in 2A or any right. None of the terms used are ambiguously defined, try using a legal dictionary instead of saying they’re ambiguous because you don’t understand them.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      Militia has a legal definition, as does arms. Bearing them seems clear to me, ability to use them. Free states are not free to ignore any right enumerated, so that’s a no brainer, same with the loss of rights. If 2A is ambiguously worded because we want it to define it’s own terms instead of using the standard legal definitions, then what does this make every other right? It seems to me that it’s being defined ambiguous as an attempt to pick it apart.
      - jjk166 4y ago
        There's no such thing as the standard legal definition, most terms, including these, have multiple definitions. Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition? For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke? Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed? How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings? If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement? It's turtles all the way down. It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct. Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.

galangalalgol 4y ago

In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".

tekknik 4y ago
How is the second amendment ambiguous? It’s one of the more clear written rights we have.
- jjk166 4y ago
  What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so? The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error. Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require). As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      How does one person think they know more than the group of people involved in writing it? Your ego is quite strong. There are no gramatical errors in 2A or any right. None of the terms used are ambiguously defined, try using a legal dictionary instead of saying they’re ambiguous because you don’t understand them.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    Militia has a legal definition, as does arms. Bearing them seems clear to me, ability to use them. Free states are not free to ignore any right enumerated, so that’s a no brainer, same with the loss of rights. If 2A is ambiguously worded because we want it to define it’s own terms instead of using the standard legal definitions, then what does this make every other right? It seems to me that it’s being defined ambiguous as an attempt to pick it apart.
    - jjk166 4y ago
      There's no such thing as the standard legal definition, most terms, including these, have multiple definitions. Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition? For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke? Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed? How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings? If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement? It's turtles all the way down. It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct. Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.