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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by WalterBright on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @09:54PM (#33352071)
The Bill of Rights is particularly brilliant in its conciseness.

A lawyer once said that "show me a contract that's one page, and I won't be able to break it. Show me one 20 pages long, and I'll break it."

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by dragonwriter on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @10:35PM (#33352370)
So, by your standard, the Bill of Rights can’t be “broken” by a lawyer, that is, they can’t get a court to apply it in something other than the intended manner. But virtually every significant phrase in the Bill of Rights has been applied in multiple different ways by different courts over the years, so clearly lawyers have had no trouble breaking it.
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by stale2002 on Thursday October 27, 2022 @12:20AM (#33353052)
> so clearly lawyers have had no trouble breaking it.

You are missing the point. The point is comparing it to a hypothetical constitution that is 20 pages long, instead of 1 page long.

So, the 20 page long constitution, is probably easier to break, despite you misleading focus, on the irrelevant point, of the exact way the statement was phrased.

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by WalterBright on Thursday October 27, 2022 @01:35AM (#33353558)
The BoR has been under continuous and relentless assault for well over two centuries. It is battered and bloodied, but has held up surprisingly well.
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by candiddevmike on Thursday October 27, 2022 @08:11AM (#33356354)
The recent abortion ruling disagrees with you. Same with the Patriot Act.
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by dbsmith83 on Thursday October 27, 2022 @09:06AM (#33356889)
> The recent abortion ruling disagrees with you.

How?

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by dragonwriter on Thursday October 27, 2022 @11:27AM (#33359013)
> The recent abortion ruling disagrees with you.

While it is in many ways the main provision that gives meaningful impact to rights both in and beyond the BOR (though the 13th Amendment competes with it on that front, since if people can be treated as property instead of people, they have no rights) by applying them to the main locus of government authority, the states, which the BOR itself neglected to do, the 14th Amendment, which was at issue in Dobbs, is not part of the Bill of Rights.

So Dobbs doesn’t illustrate an assault on the Bill of Rights so much as its irrelevancy in the absence of subsequent amendments.

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by the_only_law on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @10:07PM (#33352165)
Yet somehow it still gets broken.
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by christophilus on Thursday October 27, 2022 @07:40AM (#33356097)
Yep. It’s like software in that sense. Show me a concise program, and I may be able To find some bugs. Show me a complicated behemoth, and I guarantee it.

The founders understood the nature of power, and thus the importance of decentralization and diversity.

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by dsfyu404ed on Thursday October 27, 2022 @09:01AM (#33356833)
This lawyer must not have been aware of the marvelous legal doctrines of mental gymnastics and motivated reasoning that often get applied to such phrases as "persons and effects" or "shall not be infringed". And let us not forget the definition tricks that get played with words like "search" and "speech".
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by WalterBright on Thursday October 27, 2022 @10:01AM (#33357573)
Oh, I'm aware of that. I have a bone to pick with a lot of the SC rulings.

But also consider that nobody has yet been put in jail for harshly criticizing the President. And you can still buy a gun.