[rauljara]

If you actually read the document, you would see that the document includes provisions for a court system under the very correct assumption that some people would read the document and come to different conclusions about just what the document means.

Ever played a board game and had people disagreed on what the rules said. If you play games of any complexity, it happens all the time. Life is considerably more difficult than any game.

[btilly]

If you actually read the document, you would see that the document includes provisions for a court system under the very correct assumption that some people would read the document and come to different conclusions about just what the document means.

The document does have a court system, but if you read it closely you'll realize that nowhere in it does it say that the courts have the ability to rule on the constitutionality of anyone else's actions, nor does it say what the courts can do if the constitution is violated. That was a power that the courts themselves decided that they had. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison for details.

[anigbrowl]

Yes, but that decision was grounded in the courts' enumerated powers and strangely nobody has seen fit to overturn it by amendment despite having a whole 2 centuries in which to do so.

[tel]

So if you realize you made a mistake 2 centuries ago it's absolutely too late to fix it?

[anigbrowl]

There was no mistake, in my view.

[smokeyj]

if the Monopoly instructions read "if any questions arise, ask the Banker, his word is final", I would not play that game.

[fjh]

That's more or less what the rules for any Pen&Paper RPG and lots of different sports (e.g. soccer) say.

[mbreese]

Case in point: when I was younger and played soccer, we had one ref who before the game would go over rules with us. Invariably, he'd ask us what offsides was. A younger kid would always give him the book answer for the league: being ahead of the ball with less than two defenders between you and the goal (goalie counts as one). He'd quickly then say "no! offsides is this." and point to his whistle. The point was very clear... He had the final call on what was offsides, so there was no use complaining if we had a different opinion.

He was actually a quite fair ref.

[dgordon]

Yep, as anyone who watched the World Cup learned: see the phantom foul (no one even knows who it was allegedly on) that took away the US victory over Slovenia, or the referee denying a game-tying goal by England against Germany that the whole stadium got to see on replay, to which FIFA's response was to ban replay from the rest of the World Cup.

It's not good in sports and it's far worse in government.