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.
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.
1 person, appointed by the Queen. In this case it isnt a "slippery slope" where technically it could happen etc it happened.
"The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as the Dismissal, culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Governor-General Sir John Kerr."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
Later it was alleged that Kerr had acted for the United States government in dismissing Whitlam.
There is actually a lot to one day come out about that interesting period of time.
This was when Australians lost their sovereignty and became a puppet state of US corporations and intelligence agencies.
Just like Germany.
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.
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.
Haha. You could ask:
Gough Whitlam
Kevin Rudd
Julia Gillard
Tony Abbot
Malcolm Turnbull
I don’t know how long such arrangements can persevere, but it’d be delightful if they didn’t survive past Lizzie and Charlie.
I mean, it’s the 21st century. If we have no gods, then why do we still have masters?
Ontologically speaking, sovereignty in a secular nation can have no metaphysical assertions (“divine right to rule”), so there can be no legitimate claims of primacy over other humans.
But this is well known. Perhaps it’s the invisible and inactive nature of British monarchy that permits it to survive: they do next no nothing publicly, so they don’t step on toes.
Which means that these people are actually indirectly selected by voters, but are changed in a much slower way and will not be a series of populists who rewrite everything every time a political climate changes a bit.
This sounds like a very good thing.
Then voters are reminded of how little their votes actually matter, directly or indirectly.
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).
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.
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... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Bill_of_Rights_Act...
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.
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".
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you have specific reasons why you think that's the case? I did give concrete examples, some of which are indeed recent events, but all of these seem to hold in general outside the context of recent events.
> Still, the US constitution is pretty great. I don't know of one that is better.
What countries do you compare to here? And what would be the dimensions you're comparing them on?
> I don't believe the current political climate could improve it significantly.
I think that's true, but that might speak more to the political climate in the US than the inherent quality of the constitution.
For what would the US constitution be a liability for? It was designed to limit power. That some people might perceive that as limiting is probably for the better. It was imperative for the idea of checks and balances which today seem much more lacking in the US. And the nouveau critics of the constitution seem completely lost on that point.
As I said, it isn't perfect. I don't know the constitution of every country and there might be one that is indeed better. Do you have an example?
Constitutions do not just limit power. They prescribe how a society organizes itself, including how to exert power (not just how to limit it). A major goal for democratic constitutions is enabling a society to make collective decisions.
E.g. the US congress is famously struggling to make decisions. An interesting question then is how the US constitution prescribes decisions must be made, and whether that framework of decision making is successful along certain criteria (e.g. representing voter will, protecting fundamental rights).
If you're interested in comparing to other constitutions, a good way might be researching countries that "score well", e.g. that have stable governments, non-violent transitions of power, successful decision making, score well on the human development index, etc. - or countries where things are going particularly poor. I find that the positive example is often more interesting, because the poor outcomes often have major negative factors that might not apply in other countries and might not relate to their respective constitution.
Countries that come to mind would be the likes of Sweden, Japan, Botswana, New Zealand, but your mileage may vary depending on what you consider to be positive outcomes for a society.
But I still do think the US constitution does indeed hold up rather nicely, especially in their current political climate where people might tend to disagree with each other. It provides the most essential legal guarantees. In this case a constitution has the important role to define what people actually agree on.
I think what you say about the irrelevance of the constitution in poor outcomes is also true for the success case. Switzerland or Norway score very high on metrics measuring democracy and social services. But their overall strategic position is probably a major factor.
It is difficult to quantify success in governance and this might highly depend on perspective. Japan or South Africa have solid constitutions too, but you have to read it very differently than that of the US. You have to mind the age difference.
And yet, Roe was overturned. Gay rights are next.
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.
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.
As an American of a certain age, I'd say that it's because culture changes slowly.
While it was obvious to me decades ago that sentient beings should have bodily autonomy and that it was cruel to deny those same beings the right to love who and how they need to do so, that wasn't the case across most of the US.
In fact, the opposition to stuff like bodily autonomy, basic marriage rights, and a raft of other issues weren't (as it is now) concentrated in a single political party as it is today.
And that's why Roe v. Wade was never codified by statute, at least not at the Federal level (note that each state has its own laws regarding bodily autonomy).
Which is a huge mistake IMHO. Bodily autonomy isn't something that should be legislated by any government. Full stop.
Before the age of the 24/7 news cycle (amped up by orders of magnitude with the advent of "social" media), political discourse was generally more local and more amenable to compromise at the national level.
There are numerous reasons for the political and geographical "sorting" that's gone on for the last 40 years or so, but the upshot has been that folks have become more reactionary, more intolerant and more likely to demonize those with whom they disagree.
In fact, in many cases political operatives in the US don't even pretend to address issues. Rather they just demonize the political "other," refuse to cooperate to create positive change and leave it at that.
And the bodily autonomy issue is part and parcel of that trend. There have always been busybodies who want to control what others do, say or think. And a small group of religious extremists hijacked one of the major parties (because that party had continued to lose power and influence because of their anti-liberty, anti-working class stances) that recently culminated in the recent SCOTUS decision[4].
It's really sad. Not because things were so much better 40 years ago. In fact, in many respects, things are better for minority and under-represented groups.
Back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s[5], the death of a black man at the hands of police[0] (or a civilian[1] for that matter) was almost always just shrugged off.
Today, folks go to jail[2][3] for that sort of thing.
Is the US the inclusive, free society that we claim to be? No. Are we better than we used to be? Yes.
Does more need to be done? Definitely.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyd
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women's_Healt...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americ...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. - Ninth Amendment
And note - gay marriage and abortion have majority support among the American populace, and in many states where they have currently been outlawed.
Calling for a Constitutional Amendment for this is a red herring, as rights do not have to be enumerated in the Constitution to exist. The Constitution doesn't even support the Supreme Court's right of judicial review.
And guess what -- in states like Alabama, the people of that state have elected politicians that choose to regulate things like abortion in a manner different than what would be the case in a state like California. On the flip side, you have states/municipalities that regulate the second amendment -- something DEFINITELY in the constitution, and not in a "squint really hard and it sorta makes sense" way like abortion -- much more stringently than other states. The system is working as intended.
The issue is that you're expecting every state to have the exact same cultural attitudes towards things like abortion. They don't. The majority of people in certain states are against it, and they have voted accordingly.
You are right that all rights are retained by the people, but what has people mad / worried is the states legislating against the will of the majority (specifically because there is nothing stopping them from doing so at a federal or constitutional level).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un...
[1] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/braun-supreme-court-inter...
Stop acting like there's some mainstream Republican movement to ban gay and interracial marriage, it's obviously not true when you have to sensationalize the titles of your own linked articles.
Edit:
And it's not even "they" want it to be left to the states. It's a single individual who even mentioned anything about it, and even they "backpeddled" (i.e clarified what they said after the media twisted their words for sensationalism).
> they want it to be left to the states
and republicans are already changing their platforms to include even stronger anti-gay platforms [1] as has been historically (ill just link to their platform directly) [2]
[1] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/20...
---
[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2016-republican-pa...
Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court's lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a "judicial Putsch" — full of "silly extravagances" — that reduced "the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie." In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.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.