The U.S. Constitution: A time for change?

[UncleJoseph]

I am what you might call a "constitutionalist." Some folks feel that the constitution should be a "living, breathing" document that changes to be more consistent with the times. Afterall, it was written before things like cars, televisions and nuclear arms were ever thought of.

My opinion is that the constitution is not a "living, breathing" document. It doesn't need to be changed, although it does provide the ability to make changes as deemed necessary (with a lot of hoops to jump through). It was written to declare and protect basic rights. Changes should be few and far between...I mean, how often do rights need to be changed? Rights are rights...a few expansions/contractions from time to time, perhaps, but, not wholesale rewrites or a million additions/subtractions. Certain changes, such as women's right to vote or the abolition of slavery, make perfect sense as humanity matures and grows.

If we apply a logical, common-sense approach to the constitution (and laws), we find that we don't need to continue making new laws, and only an occasional new amendment. The current trend is to try to legislate everything, leaving no room for interpretation or discretion. I find this nauseating.

Take a simple traffic law: Texting while driving. Michigan passed a new traffic law a couple of years ago making it illegal to text while driving. It certainly is a hazard, and many accidents have been caused because people have their heads buried in their phone. Indeed, many folks today are doing anything /but/ driving while motoring oblivious down the road. Because so many accidents were being caused by this new thing called texting, we needed a new law, right? We had to address this new issue that now only exists because of a new technology, right? Wrong. Michigan has had the infraction of Careless Driving on the books forever. Back before we had the infraction of "texting while driving," we simply had to apply common sense and use the careless driving infraction. We wrote careless driving infractions to people putting on make-up, texting, reading the paper or a book while driving, bent over adjusting their stereos, you name it. So we didn't need a new law, the old ones are fine...we just needed to apply it properly.

This is how I feel about most constitutional issues, and most legal issues. Yet lawmakers are writing new legislation as fast as they can. And there are so many laws on the books I don't know how we get through our day without going to jail for something...this makes me have some understanding why people see the police as nothing more than the Gestapo.

[paladin2019]

I am what you might call a "constitutionalist." Some folks feel that the constitution should be a "living, breathing" document that changes to be more consistent with the times. Afterall, it was written before things like cars, televisions and nuclear arms were ever thought of.

My opinion is that the constitution is not a "living, breathing" document. It doesn't need to be changed, although it does provide the ability to make changes as deemed necessary (with a lot of hoops to jump through). It was written to declare and protect basic rights. Changes should be few and far between...I mean, how often do rights need to be changed? Rights are rights...a few expansions/contractions from time to time, perhaps, but, not wholesale rewrites or a million additions/subtractions. Certain changes, such as women's right to vote or the abolition of slavery, make perfect sense as humanity matures and grows.

<whisper mode>Dude, you just said it's a living, breathing document that needs to change with the times. <wm>

If we apply a logical, common-sense approach to the constitution (and laws), we find that we don't need to continue making new laws, and only an occasional new amendment. The current trend is to try to legislate everything, leaving no room for interpretation or discretion. I find this nauseating.

Besides the use of the pejorative adjective "common-sense," I generally agree. (Logical is overused, too.) It presupposes any contradictory suggestion inherently lacks common sense.

Take a simple traffic law: Texting while driving. Michigan passed a new traffic law a couple of years ago making it illegal to text while driving. It certainly is a hazard, and many accidents have been caused because people have their heads buried in their phone. Indeed, many folks today are doing anything /but/ driving while motoring oblivious down the road. Because so many accidents were being caused by this new thing called texting, we needed a new law, right? We had to address this new issue that now only exists because of a new technology, right? Wrong. Michigan has had the infraction of Careless Driving on the books forever. Back before we had the infraction of "texting while driving," we simply had to apply common sense and use the careless driving infraction. We wrote careless driving infractions to people putting on make-up, texting, reading the paper or a book while driving, bent over adjusting their stereos, you name it. So we didn't need a new law, the old ones are fine...we just needed to apply it properly.

<nods sagely> Were any lawyers able to get acquittals due to "your" vague application of the law? I mean, c'mon, the law was decades old. It didn't actually say you couldn't text, did it?

This is how I feel about most constitutional issues, and most legal issues. Yet lawmakers are writing new legislation as fast as they can. And there are so many laws on the books I don't know how we get through our day without going to jail for something...this makes me have some understanding why people see the police as nothing more than the Gestapo.

A warning sign of a society sliding into fascism is a proliferation of laws that effectively criminalize everyday commerce and leave the people wondering if their next action will draw sanction.

That said, there is a need for complex and overly considered administrative law. That's its point; it is the rules we establish for our representatives to run our government for us. But law as it relates to the common citizen should be lean, liberal, and intuitive; a n actual or obvious potential harm should exist before society sanctions an action.

Unfortunately, complex law is often used to suppress "undesirables" while others have no fear of harassment for the same infraction. Uneven application of the law is an even bigger issue, and it's the one that most often turns people against the most obvious representative of that capricious authority, the police.

[3278]

My opinion is that the constitution is not a "living, breathing" document.

Sometimes I wish it could be changed more easily, actually. The internet just isn't something the framers could have envisioned, and while their general principles still largely hold true today, some of the things they wrote down are archaic. In the same way that it's good that we could make it so black people are now counted as one whole person, and not three-fifths of a person, we need to be able to amend the document for our times.

How to do this, though, without it basically just being WikiConstitution? Well, that's what the whole amendment process is designed for, but it didn't foresee our deadlocked legislature, so here we are.

The Constitution is bad-ass, and sets good initial starting principles, and I don't want us to flex those more than we have to, but we do need ways to do the things you mention, the women's right to vote or the abolition of slavery. Striking that balance is very difficult.

Take a simple traffic law: Texting while driving. Michigan passed a new traffic law a couple of years ago making it illegal to text while driving. ... Because so many accidents were being caused by this new thing called texting, we needed a new law, right? We had to address this new issue that now only exists because of a new technology, right? Wrong. Michigan has had the infraction of Careless Driving on the books forever. Back before we had the infraction of "texting while driving," we simply had to apply common sense and use the careless driving infraction.

There are two arguments for these kinds of laws:
1. They bring attention to the citizens; they're not aimed at enforcers or legislators, but rather are a way to use the legislative process to bring public attention to a dangerous new type of behavior.

2. It makes things easier on judges, who now have a specific law on the book to point to, so defense attorneys have an easier time arguing that texting isn't distracting.

I don't know if I buy either of these; they're just the arguments I've heard.

This is how I feel about most constitutional issues, and most legal issues. Yet lawmakers are writing new legislation as fast as they can.

When you've got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. People view things through the lens of how they can do what they do to make the change they want; they don't ask if that's the best way to make the change, because this is the power they wield.

[Bonefish]

The founding fathers couldn't account for everything. So... You know, we have to intepret their ideas to our modern life.

For example, the concept of privacy: in 5 years, drones will be something a high school student makes in their spare time. In 10 years, everything will be under surveillance. EVERYTHING. How does that factor in?

[UncleJoseph]

<whisper mode>Dude, you just said it's a living, breathing document that needs to change with the times. <wm>

I should've fleshed that out a bit more before I posted. What I /think/ people mean by "living, breathing document," is that they believe it should be readily, continually evolving to match whatever is en vogue at the time. To me, this suggests a document that is easily changed based on whimsy, and, if we follow that to its conclusion, means the current document wouldn't even closely resemble the original document.

In more specific terms, that means the Constitution is really meaningless, and we simply change everything to suit our needs as we go, based on what is popular at the time, or based on fleeting emotions that hold barely more than a casual grip on the people.

The Constitution, as it was originally written, provides us the ability to make changes, but only through a careful review process full of (hopefully) substantial checks and balances, and after thoughtful, thorough interpretation of the existing document.

Slavery, women's suffrage, etc. were all things that we later realized needed to be addressed as society evolved. These were not casual changes (prohibition may have been an exception) made to the Constitution on some sort of whim. So I don't think it should be easily changed (especially when it takes rights away that were specifically listed as being protected) based on whatever's fashionable at the time.

Does that make more sense?