I respect your strong feelings on this matter, but you aren't arguing from US jurisprudence at all.
It's also unfair to say I'm not "arguing from US jurisprudence at all", because essentially you're saying "I'm not arguing without already conceding that the constitution is meaningless.", only you're putting it in terms that imply I'm being unreasonable.
Actually, I'll take that as concession of my points in full.
The constitution says what it says. IF you don't like it, or the government doesn't like it, it has provisions for how to amend it.
Ignoring it is something they cannot do, because when they do that, they lose authorization under it.
This is quite logical, and I think irrefutable.
Anyway, I understand your general line of attack, I don't find it compelling and feel that I've already refuted it... and comments on HN often go off into the weeds so, I'm done.
Good day!
Marbury v Madison didn't come out of left field. Hamilton presaged it in the Federalist Papers, explaining not only that the judiciary under our constitution is responsible for "interpreting" the law (his words), but that the gravity of that responsibility is one of the reasons they have permanent tenure, to keep them independent of the legislature.
Hamilton envisioned a government in which conflicts between the "people" (e.g. the Constitution) and the courts would be resolved simply by amending the Constitution. As could just as easily be done to, for instance, end all regulation and (one supposes) the 2-centuries-old concept of judicial review.
I understand what you're saying and agree that there's insufficient compatibility between our worldviews to productively argue about the Constitutionality of laws arising from conflicts between the explicitly enumerated concerns in the Constitution (here: the enumerated power of Congress to secure copyright, and the First Amendment).
Regarding the track record of my argument, I will not disagree, it is not encouraging.
If it were encouraging, I might believe that a just government were possible.
Unfortunately the track record you point out only serves to confirm the theoretical argument that I've been slightly making, which could be:
tl;dr: Power corrupts, and the corrupt seek government power.
[1] It should also be noted that in this ruling ,the Supreme Court also rightly ruled that any law passed that was in violation of the constitution was null and void the moment it was passed, and it did not need the supreme court to rule as such for it to be null and void. Further, they are correct that when two "laws" are in conflict it is right for them to judge which one holds, their key error is in thinking that one of the laws they can decide to very rule is the constitution.
[2] I'm open to quotes from the constitution itself, or the framers that disagree with this perspective, but I'm not likely to debate it much further.
At the end of the day, most people have this perception that the supreme court is "naturally" or "rightfully" the decider of whether things are constitutional or not, and my opponent above seems to think that the documents meaning can change over time. I can't dissuade people of that belief... but I can only point out that if that is the case, the inevitable result is eventually tyranny. -----
Consider this. How can any law, morally, that is not enumerated in the constitution as a power granted to the federal government, even if passed by the congress unanimously, signed by the president, and upheld by the supreme court as "constitutional"-- be legitimate?
The very existence of these institutions is created by the constitution.
They must rely on the constitution to claim any legitimacy at all.
Thus it matters not, logically, even if all three of them agree to do something, if that something is not authorized by the constitution, its not authorized at all.
I know this is essentially irrelevant because all three have simply chosen to ignore the constitution for the most part.
I just want to address the theoretical argument that the supreme court, or any of the other branches, or all three together, can decide to ignore the constitution and have any legitimacy.