WTF Since when was a 40% vote enough for a motion to pass or stall
- Thread starter dbzeag
- Start date
Correct. I think Jefferson is a good enough person to speak for the *intent* of the Constitution. And really it's stare decisis, just like the Right to Privacy.
Yes. The Supreme Court has continually ruled that there is an implied right to privacy in the Constitution (iirc, the 4th Amendment), even though it isn't explicitly stated.
That isn't always a good thing, which is the philosophical conundrum many of the Framers were well aware of. Do we let those rights evolve over time, by popular demand? Or do we resist what the people want in order to preserve the rights of the minority? It seems like a simple, almost mundane issue on its surface, but it's very complicated. Think about it for more than a few minutes and you start to understand the actual weight of the Constitution.
I guess to me is seems stupid to go against the will of the people. Only because I come from a country where majority trumps all. But I guess here it could be a scary thing as the Christians would take over this country and impose their laws on every American, kinda like the Iranian Revolution.
Hardliners will read this how they want and then try to tell you the intent of a few brilliant yet irrelevant dead men.
SCOTUS interprets this exactly the way you and I do, a la Lemon Test.
And when the will of the people is hard to discern or split down the middle or pretty much antithetical to what we consider basic morality today the issue gets complicated even further. The will of the people for the longest time was that owning black people was cool. The will of the people in many areas around the country is that gays shouldn't marry and that universal health care is a bad thing. Until recently if we were just going by the will of the people both of those would be shot down every time.
Remember also that your country not only doesn't have the massive population as ours but it doesn't have the ethnic and national salad bowl that we do. It's easier to get 20 million people that mostly live on the same coast to agree with each other than it is to get 300 million that span almost an entire hemisphere.
it usually does. right now there are a lot of legal arguments in play to define exactly how far that right to privacy extends
TSRH
Hell, SCOTUS just ruled that a warrant is required to read someone's email.
And honestly, many times when they don't, its simply because law hasn't caught up with technology.
edit: And btw, a quick Google gave me this, http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/privacy/austr_law.html
I really don't hope that's the case. I would be hunted down and incarcerated for committing the act of sodomy just 7 years ago in the state I am now residing if the "majority rules" was the end all be all.
