[higherpurpose]

I've said it several times before here, and I'll say it again. US needs a "Constitutional Court" that filters out unconstitutional bills after they are signed by the president, and before they become law. Some might still get through, but everything else will function just like it does today, so there will still be a chance for for that bad law to reach the Supreme Court and be struck down once and for all.

The benefit of a Constitutional Court however is that it should filter out most of the unconstitutional bills trying to pass the government. I feel that right now it's way too easy for Congress/president to pass an unconstitutional bill, and then waiting anywhere from 5 to 20 years (or to never), to strike down that law, time in which a whole generation can be abused by the government (which I find unacceptable - bad laws should be struck down much sooner).

I also think special Courts are usually bad news as they tend to become biased towards their purpose. So for example a "patent Court" will become biased towards patents, a spying Court will become biased towards spying and so on. But in this case, a Constitutional Court becoming biased towards the Constitution would actually be a good thing.

[grej]

I like the sentiment of the idea but in practice, I'm not sure it actually works. The major issue is embedded within this quote in the article: "Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes"

Maybe that law would have been caught by the constitutional court, and maybe not. But in any case, it's clear that the modus operandi of too many government agencies is to find an existing law that can be most easily bent or twisted from it's original purpose and context in order to allow them to most effectively enforce what they want to enforce.

Perhaps what's really needed is more upfront transparency - transparency by design. Which, of course, is exactly what governments don't want. But that might be the only truly effective approach, because you aren't going to stop bureaucrats from doing what they do, and power by it's very nature corrupts. But whether it's this case, or the spying scandals, or police abuses, the thing that got the most results, fastest, was exposure of the situation to the public.

[authatheist]

You know that governments tend to abuse their power over us, so you want one arm of the government to keep the other one in check? One head of the Hydra will prevent the others from biting you?

The US is a prime example of how a limited government just doesn't stay limited. Words on a piece of parchment don't actually prevent psychopath rulers from abusing us. The USSR had a constitution too, and it "guaranteed" free speech just as well as any other constitution would, ie. not at all.

There's no political solution to the abuses caused by an arrangement of rulers vs subjects. The only way to improve things is to realize we should not have rulers at all.

[Spooky23]

That is a pretty broad shift from the theory of how courts operate in the U.S.

We have an adversarial system where the legality of a law attacked by someone harmed by that law and defended by the government. Who would a constitutional court represent? Dead white guys from 1780? Someone else?

If created, the first thing the court would do would be to rule itself out of existence, because the Supreme Court is at river of what is/isn't constitutional... And has been recognized as such since John Jay.

[dllthomas]

"If created, the first thing the court would do would be to rule itself out of existence, because the Supreme Court is at river of what is/isn't constitutional... And has been recognized as such since John Jay."

If created through a constitutional amendment, this isn't a concern...

[higherpurpose]

And yet the FISA Court is not adversarial.

[dragonwriter]

> I've said it several times before here, and I'll say it again. US needs a "Constitutional Court" that filters out unconstitutional bills after they are signed by the president, and before they become law.

The reason the US does not have such a thing is that the principal of the US judicial system is to operate on real controversies with real, concrete interested parties rather than dealing with abstract, theoretical conflicts.

> I also think special Courts are usually bad news as they tend to become biased towards their purpose. So for example a "patent Court" will become biased towards patents, a spying Court will become biased towards spying and so on. But in this case, a Constitutional Court becoming biased towards the Constitution would actually be a good thing.

I think you mistake the way that specialty courts become biased -- like other regulatory bodies, they become biased by developing a strong relationships with the most-frequently involved parties appearing before them. For a Constitutional Court, where the potential pre-implementation challengers of a law are varied, but the defenders are the same, the expected bias is probably not in the direction you'd like.

[rhizome]

Well, we already have a version of that for the Executive branch in the form of the Office of Legal Counsel, and that's how we got John Yoo and Jay Bybee.

[dTal]

How do you set up the incentives so that it's in the interest of the court to do its job, and not bow to the inevitable pressure to rubber-stamp bills?

[cmdrfred]

If you asked Washington or Jefferson probably something like death for those who have (treasonously) knowingly violated the constitution.

[forgotpasswd3x]

That isn't treason, actually. Treason is specifically defined in the Constitution:

> Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

[cmdrfred]

Perhaps not to that definition but the according to websters. 'the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.'

[krapp]

Then perhaps Washington or Jefferson would point out the specious reasoning in summary executions for having " (treasonously) knowingly violated the constitution" using a definition of treason which is unconstitutional.

[cmdrfred]

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." -Thomas Jefferson

[dTal]

And who enforces that? The Constitutional Court Court? You've only moved the problem.

[cmdrfred]

The people, if you can get a representative number of signatures the individual is incarcerated and a measure is put on the ballot.

[rendall]

"I've said it several times before here, and I'll say it again. US needs a "Constitutional Court" that filters out unconstitutional bills after they are signed by the president, and before they become law."

We already have this. It's called The Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can already declare any law unconstitutional.

[f3llowtraveler]

Yeah but they don't have an automatic veto before legislation goes into effect. As he said, they only examine the issue, if at all, years later.