Most Offensive Thing I’ve Read In a Long Time

From The New York Times:

The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. …

Nothing like starting out with a forceful defense.

“The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. …

“Bristles with data”? Are you f***ing kidding me?

… Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.

“Among the world’s democracies,” Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s.”

“The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.”

Not one mention in the article of the idea that parliamentary systems are not very good at protecting from the tyranny of the majority.

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old …

Let me get this right: a reporter, whose job it is to write tightly criticizes a document because it’s written tersely?

And god forbid we pay any attention to something that’s old … I’ve heard that same opinion from 9th graders about why they shouldn’t have to read Shakespeare.

and it guarantees relatively few rights. …

No mention there of the give and take: one person’s right places an obligation on all other persons to honor it. It doesn’t sound as good if you say it like this: “and it places few obligations on citizens”. No wonder most governments around the world don’t like it.

… The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use …

Yep, the problem has to be those old white guys on the conservative side of the bench.

… As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.” (Yugoslavia used to hold that title, but Yugoslavia did not work out.)

The flip side of that is that we’ve only had to undo one amendment.

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years …

Is that supposed to be a good thing? The newish “constitution” of the faculty senate at my school took several semesters to put together, is longer than The Constitution, and didn’t pass the first time. Oh … and it lacks things like, say, any mechanism to correct factual mistakes made in administrators written LRT decisions. You know … the stuff you can get sued for?

… The Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.

Grand. Whose obligations is it to provide the travel you have a right to? And, what if there’s two people and only enough food for one?

Yep … gotta’ get gun control in there:

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms.

I’m done now.

Technorati Tags: constitution,rights

Comments

[Rodet]

I don't claim to be a constitutional scholar, but it's obvious this person is not one either. I'd like to see a comparison of political stability or something like it between the U.S. and countries with similar constitutional law and those who have been reworking theirs since the 70s. I think the conclusions would be obvious. Now, would the author voluntarily move to one of these countries with a more 'modern' and less 'idiosyncratic' constitution? Wow.

[Dave Tufte]

Hey Cortney:

Don't be silly ... there's no way the author or scholars could move to those places ... they wouldn't be able to get skinny lattes there.