| HN Mirror

>Why are we using a 200+ year old document that represented the preferences of maybe 20% of the country to regulate the internet?

Because it and following interpretation provides the boundaries for law in the US.

And comparing it to a fetish, or labeling it a 200 year old document, when is has been changed since then (last amended in 1992, still has multiple amendments pending, and can be changed again) is also absurd.

The amendment that was ratified in 1992 was proposed in the 1700s.

The amendment prior to that was from 1971, over fifty years ago. We're rapidly approaching the point where we can say the constitution hasn't been updated with new ideas in generations.

The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution. We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally, that makes it harder to change.

>The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution.

No, it isn't. I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights is still a pretty good set of basic rights. Would you be willing to roll the dice on throwing a random out to get a new one? That is what can easily happen when you make changing it easy enough to be done quickly.

Also, why would you want to change the root of all laws at any crazy rate? There is a reason Congress makes new laws, and states make new laws, every single year. You should not need to make drastic changes to the base legal framework just because someone invented an internet - you should be able to apply current legal frameworks, and if that is not enough, make small changes to address such changes. Even small legal changes at the Federal and local levels have significant cost to make needed changes throughout society. Now allow tinkerers to make constitutional changes willy nilly, and guess what the cost will be.

Or do you think it would be better for short-lived political trends to simply rewrite major sections of the Constitution every few years? That seems like an absolutely terrible way to plan a stable society.

>We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally,

Conversely, maybe the overall framework is pretty good, despite each subgroup not getting their way, so it doesn't need changed to add amendments for every tiny whim.

> No, it isn't.

If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s, I don't know that we're going to agree on much.

On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph, but the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level.

On a technological level, what we have today is unthinkable to someone in the seventies. The internet, cell phones, personal computers, autonomous vehicles and drones, machine learning, predictive policing... All these things have major impacts on our way of life.

The world has changed too. Militarily, economically, socially, religiously, politically, etc.

>On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph

Yet all of those were given protection based on Constitutional arguments, right? With no change needed to specifically add a new tiny rule to the Constitution for each single change in societal beliefs, right?

>If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s

People still work, buy houses, live by most of the same desires, needs, goals, interactions. Contract law is still useful. The Bill of Rights is still pretty useful.

In fact, I'd expect the vast majority of concepts in US law from the 1970s are still useful today. I think you overestimate the need to legislate every change in technology more than any country does.

>the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level

I seriously doubt that. Not a single issue you raised was not an issue in the 70s with a significant amount of people working on those issues. And fundamentally changed would mean things considered part of humanity in the 1970s are now gone, which I don't think is true at all. At best we've added some features and beliefs we now think are better. But we still care about people, about life, about dreams, about relationships, about dreams, about love, and death, and right to pursue happiness, and on and on.

If your system of laws is so weak as to been updating at a Constitutional level because someone invented a drone, then that system is fundamentally flawed, because it will break and never be able to be applied to life in any reasonable way. A good system has at a Constitutional level high level concepts that provide guidelines and boundaries that are refined by local, easier to change, and less system-breaking laws. That is the one we have.

We disagree, fundamentally. Amicably, I'm going to suggest these threads have run their course. Handshake and agree to disagree?

edmundsauto 1427 days ago

Didn’t Thomas Jefferson advocate to throw out the constituion every 20 years and rewrite it to reflect the current generation? How do you think about his position, seems like at least one person thought it would be good to re randomize…

It sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. How could you possibly plan for any future with that much constant upheaval? Businesses couldn't function, since contracts across complete rewrites would not work. You may not own any of your property across a rewrite. Maybe things you did today become felonies tomorrow, and you get jailed, buy then maybe get freed in the next rewrite....

Having stable long term laws is a pre-requisite for any modern economy to function.

_jal 1427 days ago

It is hardly absurd to point out that the rules used in a formal system are leading to absurd, bad, broken results.

And people do fetishize the 200 year old document. (At least, the parts they like.) You see it all the time, and saying otherwise is also form of fetish or worship.

JumpCrisscross 1427 days ago

> Why are we using a 200+ year old document

Because it’s worked. The alternative, opening up the entire system of government for debate, simultaneously, continuously, predictably tears itself apart in a generation. (That or you wind up with an unwritten Constitution only the elites can decipher.) The Constitution isn’t sacred. But it’s far from worthless as a basis of our society.

Most modern, developed nations regularly update their constitutions. The US is somewhat anomalous in holding on to an ancient document and considering it sacred.

>The US is somewhat anomalous in holding on to an ancient document and considering it sacred.

The Constitution was amended 12 times in the 1900s, the last being 1992. There are still multiple pending amendments.

And, as a Union of States, each also with constitutions and amendments, how do you treat the overall legal entity? Most developed nations are about the size of a US state - and some are slowly banding into larger groups like the EU.

So how is this anomalous? Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates? Are any of the structure like the US as a union of semi-autonomous states?

Yes. https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/chronology/#

1992 amendment was proposed in the 1700s, you have to go back more than 50 years to get to the next amendment.

> Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates?

It's missing state constitutions. The US is a United States of America - a union of semi-autonomous states.

Picking only a high level misses that there are higher levels (such as world treaties and laws we are entered into) and ignores that the US is a conglomeration. When you'd pick Germany, but ignore EU rules, it's somewhat like picking Texas, and ignoring US.

It seems you're not really comparing frameworks very well.

hotpotamus 1427 days ago

To listen to conservatives, we spent most of the 20th century creating violation after violation of the constitution. If they're correct, then to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century.

JumpCrisscross 1427 days ago

> to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century

The century that saw America exit WWII and the Cold War victorious while navigating a civil rights revolution? All amidst a series of peaceful transitions of powers, including the removal of a corrupt executive?

hotpotamus 1427 days ago

I believe a conservative would say those ends don't justify the constitutional defying means that we used to achieve them. I mean, they wouldn't say that because it sounds crazy, but if you piece together what they say about the constitution, that's the message that comes through to me.

JumpCrisscross 1427 days ago

> believe a conservative would say those ends don't justify the constitutional defying means that we used to achieve them

One can say many things. At the end of the day, the track record stands for itself.

hotpotamus 1427 days ago

Yes, and many do not like that track record. For instance, allowing women to have abortions, and they now have the ability to alter that track.