> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
As to the bill of rights, so long as the police are armed and can act with impunity... imho, the populace should be able to be armed. I don't personally own a firearm... I also don't spew racist rhetoric. I am a strong believer in all civil rights.
We have some issues in our country right now, but I have a good feeling we'll get them worked out in the next few years.
Many of our laws and rights are in place not for short term feelings about safety between people and police, but for long term safety of the people from a tyrannical government. And that tyrannical government might take hundreds of years to begin to form in a democracy... But the bill of rights and ability of the people to feel secure without their government's support, keeps the government from getting too power-hungry or separating too far from the will of the people.
No, we haven't. In fact, we copied it largely from the UK. (We didn't like the fact that as a colony we didn't get representation in the national legislature or the full range of rights citizens in the UK itself had, but, hey, the US does the same thing. Initially, and still partially, even to it's capital district.
We've got the oldest surviving written Constitution, sure, but that's a different issue.
The UK doesn't have a single written document that lays out the Constitution, but I wouldn't necessarily call the Constitution informal.
> its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it isn't
True.
> one house,
The UK still has a bicameral, not unicameral, legislature, though it now has priority in the lower house (unlike the US, which retains greater power in the undemocratic upper house, a feature it copied from the UK which has since shed it.)
> The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the US is a republic.
The UK is a representative democracy with a ceremonial monarch and the US is a representative democracy without a ceremonial monarch; the absence of a monarch is the sum total of the difference indicated by “republic”.
> Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776.
Neither, though, was the US in 1776, or 1789, for much the same reason: the colonies had imported and retained (in some cases added to) the kinds of restrictions on the franchise found in the UK, and kept them past the revolution and Constitution, which left decision of who could vote to the States (and, while not in the federal government, also often had even more stringent property, etc., requirements for office holders.)
And the U.S. was? Much like the UK, the franchise was reserved to a subset of land freeholders. Only about 10-20% of the US population was eligible to vote. (http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-8-1-b-w...)
The UK did and still does have a written constitution, it's just not entirely written, and what's written is spread across multiple documents--the Magna Carta being one of the obvious ones. The US is not that different. Much of the US Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, was copied verbatim from the written parts of the English constitution. And even conservative American jurists who reject Substantive Due Process regularly recognize unwritten constitutional rules and norms, especially those deriving from English constitutional norms.
Aside from federalism (where states maintained some sovereignty), the most fundamental constitutional differences between the US and the UK relate to judicial review and parliamentary supremacy. But it didn't become clear until 1803 in Marbury v. Madison that the US would follow a different path. If Congress was the final arbiter of legislative constitutionality (as many believed in 1789, and some conservatives argue to this day), there would be little if any functional difference between the US and UK constitutional systems. Indeed, now that US Senators are directly elected, but for Marbury v Madison even federalism would be little different than UK's so-called devolution. Japan nominally has judicial review, but their supreme court has zero inclination to strike down legislation so in practice the Japanese legislature has similar constitutional powers as the UK parliament.
One could argue that UK is still not a democracy now. House of lords, Queen's hard and soft power, traditions, no legally binding referendum that can be done without government or parliament.
And very little of the US governmental system was copied from the UK. A parliamentary system is just totally different from what we have.
According to this, San Marino is still using their 1600 constitution:
* https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/oldest-constitutions-sti...
There is some debate on whether it counts though.
I think that is one of the main problems with our constitution the states have a heap of power. I believe it is due to the history of federation where the six states came together to form Australia. There was a bunch of compromises required to get everyone on board, which is why you have things like Tasmania having the same number of Senators as NSW despite the huge disparity in total population.
Because of all the state provisions it is very difficult to make changes to the constitution. It requires a referendum with an overall national majority and a majority of all the states is also needed. That's why borderline referendums never seem to pass only the ones that are overwhelming supported ever get up (depending on your pov this is a feature not a bug).
In practice this is not something that we have to worry about here in Australia. The high court has rule in a few case an implied right to freedom of religion in the constitution in much the same way they have done so for freedom of speech - although freedom of speech seems to be under far more attack of late here.
The reason why the US constitution is so hard to amend is because of how high the bars are for the process - 2/3 in the House and in the Senate to submit amendments, and 3/4 of all state legislatures to ratify them. Or if going via state convention, then 2/3 of all state legislatures to request it, but still 3/4 to ratify anything that comes out of it.
I don't think it was a bad system originally, back before the 14th Amendment - since originally all those restrictions were on what the federal government can do, not on what the states can do. Between the states and their citizens, it was supposed to be taken care of by their respective state constitutions, which are generally much easier to amend - and even if they didn't, they wouldn't block other states from experimenting. With 14A, and the gradual incorporation of various constitutional protections on state level via it, the process to amend it needs to be more democratic IMO, and acknowledge the people, not just the states.
And how did that go with Trump-GOP in the White House and the House-GOP and Senate-GOP? See also Kavanaugh and the ignoring/suppression of Garland.
Yes, there is.
There is no explicit general prohibition on laws impairing that specific right the way there is some other rights, but the existence of the right is explicit, among other places in Amendment XV, Sec. 1: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This explicitly states that the right exists, and then goes on to prohibit denying or abridging it on an enumerated set of bases. (There's two other voting rights amendments following the same pattern.)
And it's not like it's a new invention. I mean, women couldn't vote back when 15A was passed, and they still couldn't vote after. It wasn't a surprise, either - many suffragists opposed 15A even before it was ratified for this exact reason, because its wording made it clear that it wasn't covering sex.
"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures."
It's exceptionally clear that it's an explicit right to vote for the election of senators.
Not true.
Yeah, but they mess even that up by making it obligatory. :)
I see this as an advantage of compulsory voting over other systems. Especially when voting is quick and painless, usually taking no more than 10 or 20 mins on a weekend every three years or so.
Compulsory voting is more democratic. The USA should make voting compulsory!
Ditto with the brexit referendum! If only they made it compulsory, brexit would have probably not passed (presumably many people just didn't expect brexit to win, and so didn't bother going to vote).
Have you heard of the term donkey voting? null votes in Australia are about 5% of total votes (federally) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-04/informal-votes-to-hav...
Also it's only sorta compulsory in a sense, you can just never register and never have to vote. but if you do register you will get fined if you don't vote. the amount of unregistered voters is about 4% of the population. so at it's worst it's atleast more representative then some other democracies.
I find this funny because the SCOTUS basically can change the Constitution whenever they want.
The second amendment only states that the United States itself has a right to bear arms in order to defend itself (have a Militia)[0]. It didn't provide citizens the right to personal protection by guns until a 2008 Supreme Court case [1].
0: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
That means it's not about the State defending itself, it's about the people defending the free State. The Heller case simply extended the existing individual right to own guns in order to protect their free State to that of protecting your person and home.
SCOTUS didn't change the Constitution however they wanted. That's ridiculous. They applied existing law to a situation they were asked to judge.
> The Heller case simply extended the existing individual right to own guns in order to protect their free State to that of protecting your person and home.
This is what I am saying is "funny" - While the decision was well-informed and carefully thought out, the SCOTUS did effectively change the constitution by changing what some text meant. It's not different than case law being the biggest precedent for regular legal proceedings.
This is more a debate of whether or not the Constitution should be interpreted based on the original intent of those who wrote it. SCOTUS has shown that they think we should adapt to the times and that the United States can progressive deal with issues, and I believe it worked out in a positive manner for the specific 2008 case granting citizens more rights and freedoms.
It's an example of why the right is needed. Especially given the people raised a violent coup against their own government. These people were not in favor of disarming the public in general... to interpret it otherwise would be effectively changing the law.
Essentially like a justification for public schools and compulsory education being "literacy is essential to function be an informed citizen which is needed for self government". Just like how merely being able to shoot well isn't enough to be a good soldier but it is important.
As to "training," there wasn't a regimen of regular firearms training per-se. It was generally considered common knowledge to know how to load and fire one's musket. As to any comparison of modern training, it seems to me like today's police, at least in major cities like NYC receive less training than a typical gun owner outside major cities.
1. It is important to have a populace capable of using firearms. 2. The right to bear arms shall not be infringed.
Of course the interpretations are for better or worse living in practice regardless of plain text - freedom of the press still applies to internet and unfortunately the special pleading of obscenity laws have survived for centuries.
The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with obsolete rights that do more harm than good, and that are virtually impossible to get rid of, like the US with its right to bear arms".