Going off on a tangent here, but from the beginning shouldn't we have been treating constitutional articles and amendments as equivalent to the law, or making laws to mirror the constitution - with actual punishments for violators? Because somehow despite the constitution being "the law of the land" it's actually treated with less weight than federal law. Our political leaders "fear" the law more than the constitution, and when in power use it against their enemies as much as possible. Perhaps we need to make it so that when the constitution is violated, the violator (always a government actor or subordinate) has a penalty just as if they'd violated federal law.
While you make a good point, government actors violate federal law all the time anyway and in the few times they even get caught doing so (with the law begrudgingly acting on them) they get a slap on the wrist, use our tax money to pay the "fines" and then move on.
So we need to actually make government lawbreakers beholden to laws with actual consequence to begin with before your change would matter.
Because it's not a law, and because the founding fathers were British Christians.
They didn't even really oppose the king until they realized that the institution of the king could be wielded against his subjects, in the same way that parliament had been wielded against them. The idea that it was even possible for the king to commit a crime was barely over 100 years old.
As such, they had a very foundational belief that it was required for government to be populated by people of the literal highest moral and intellectual prowess. The British aristocracy had fostered that belief, but had clearly failed from the prospective of the Americans.
Their contrast was the Romans, particularly the writings of Cicero at the fall of the Roman Republic. Clearly you can't trust a government with emergency powers (this is why Boston was seized and speech suspended). You don't want a Cesarian to wield the angry masses. Cicero wrote very clearly how he manipulated the demos in democracy to his advantage, and he didn't like it. He also knew it was what the Cesarians were doing to gain their power, and it was what the "Conservatives" were doing in reprisal back to stop Caesar.
The Americans were already very familiar with Blackwell (who was an English Liberal judge), and the old British system of the Star Chamber. They have a terrible balancing act. You need the judiciary to be independent of the government, but it only exists to arbitrate justice within the bounds of the law. The judges also have to be controlled by the law, otherwise the courts become the unaccountable force that the executive branch could be.
Somehow, you have to make the legislature susceptible to the law, without giving the judiciary defacto control over the government. And how the hell are the judiciary going to govern themselves anyway???
In fact, a good example of an overpowered judiciary is what's happening to Trump. A state judge is doing everything in her power to keep a presidential candidate from campaigning. By definition, a single judge is now holding the entire presidential election hostage. Fundamentally, you would never actually think that this would need to be done, because it was assumed that the state would protect the state and the feds would protect the feds, so this basically wouldn't be possible. Because it's Trump, and because federal over-reach has taken place, the state protects the feds and the feds protect themselves.
Fundamentally, the correct solution to all this should be the impeachment process. That was the compromise here. A legislator or executive can't be charged with a crime until impeached. Once impeached and removed from office you can charge them with a crime. And to be clear, impeachment is explicitly a political process, not a judicial one. That's why the impeachment process is governed by Roberts Rules of Order (a legislative protocol), and not by standing Jurisprudence. It's why senators can ask leading questions and things like that; it's also why it's a removal from office, and not an actual conviction with a sentence.
There's a huge problem with this, and if you look carefully, it is why Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Caesar was actually going to be prosecuted for leading a violent storming of the senate chamber. He became consol explicitly because the senate couldn't charge him with a crime while as consol. When the Senate finally did reject his cosolship (he wasn't supposed to be consol by that time, his term had run out, but he kept pretending it hadn't), he realized that his political career would be over unless he removed the senate. So he did.
The Democrats are currently accusing Trump of literally doing this.
Your better question is, how do we hold these elected leaders accountable to the law when the courts keep protecting them? Fundamentally, these are political problems. It's political control over the courts, and political influence over them. The legislature needs to be cycled out more than it is, and the appointments for judges makes the judges friendly with the government.
I would argue re-structuring judicial appointments and even congressional elections by changing a lot of the voting system (things like that I don't want to go into detail on here), making impeachments easier and a more regular occurrence is a very good start. Congress never impeaches judges, and they have all the right in the world to, always have. Again, it's a political process, not a judicial one. If the appointment is political, than so is the removal. This is mostly because statists want the judiciary and the legislature to act in a synchronous manner so that there can be no challenge to the authority of the state. One of the best things that Trump ever (accidentally) did was get impeached twice. Presidents should be regularly impeached, because it drags them in front of the Senate to keep them accountable. The problem is that the Senate is elected, and not a representation of the states. So, you gotta change that 17th amendment. Judges should also be regularly impeached. No one should have a life appointment for a judge, not from term limits, but from political impeachments.
"That could make the government a bit dysfunctional because the political winds could sweep the government in and out"
Yes, that's the point. The point is the keep the government from being stable enough to tyrannize the public. The forced instability is what keeps the government from tyrannical. That's the nature of the deep state. It is "unstable" for the executive branch to purge itself every time there is a new president; but that is the most important function to keep the executive branch from tyrannizing you. If the president can't remove his predecessor's appointments, you guarantee a deep state.
"But an unstable government could destabilize society."
No, because the government should not be powerful enough to be the force of power in society; that is a tyranny. The government doesn't regulate society at all. It merely helps in compensation, and defense of the realm. The government must not be allowed to be the stabilizing force for society in the first place. Society must be stabilized by the moral character of it's people. Deferring morals to the state is the foundational failure.
The Founding Fathers, as radically liberal as they were, still believed that the state could be a moral force; as they themselves had repeatedly governed with careful respect to the care of their subjects, and to the posterity of their civilization. They really were "better men" than what we have, and that was their greatest mistake: thinking people would be as good of character them.
A constitution isn't a collection of laws. It is the framework that the law resides in. It's like saying that a mathematical axiom is a law of mathematics. That's not actually true. An axiom is a pre-supposition of the mathematical framework that has to be assumed in order for the model to function. Mathematical theorems and laws are derived from the axioms. If the axiom is invalidated, the model fails, and the laws no longer makes sense logically. The constitution serves a similar purpose, it is the framework that makes laws possible. Without a constitution, you have no foundation of law to make laws over.
It's not a law, it's an amendment to the constitution. Point stands though.
Going off on a tangent here, but from the beginning shouldn't we have been treating constitutional articles and amendments as equivalent to the law, or making laws to mirror the constitution - with actual punishments for violators? Because somehow despite the constitution being "the law of the land" it's actually treated with less weight than federal law. Our political leaders "fear" the law more than the constitution, and when in power use it against their enemies as much as possible. Perhaps we need to make it so that when the constitution is violated, the violator (always a government actor or subordinate) has a penalty just as if they'd violated federal law.
While you make a good point, government actors violate federal law all the time anyway and in the few times they even get caught doing so (with the law begrudgingly acting on them) they get a slap on the wrist, use our tax money to pay the "fines" and then move on.
So we need to actually make government lawbreakers beholden to laws with actual consequence to begin with before your change would matter.
Because it's not a law, and because the founding fathers were British Christians.
They didn't even really oppose the king until they realized that the institution of the king could be wielded against his subjects, in the same way that parliament had been wielded against them. The idea that it was even possible for the king to commit a crime was barely over 100 years old.
As such, they had a very foundational belief that it was required for government to be populated by people of the literal highest moral and intellectual prowess. The British aristocracy had fostered that belief, but had clearly failed from the prospective of the Americans.
Their contrast was the Romans, particularly the writings of Cicero at the fall of the Roman Republic. Clearly you can't trust a government with emergency powers (this is why Boston was seized and speech suspended). You don't want a Cesarian to wield the angry masses. Cicero wrote very clearly how he manipulated the demos in democracy to his advantage, and he didn't like it. He also knew it was what the Cesarians were doing to gain their power, and it was what the "Conservatives" were doing in reprisal back to stop Caesar.
The Americans were already very familiar with Blackwell (who was an English Liberal judge), and the old British system of the Star Chamber. They have a terrible balancing act. You need the judiciary to be independent of the government, but it only exists to arbitrate justice within the bounds of the law. The judges also have to be controlled by the law, otherwise the courts become the unaccountable force that the executive branch could be.
Somehow, you have to make the legislature susceptible to the law, without giving the judiciary defacto control over the government. And how the hell are the judiciary going to govern themselves anyway???
In fact, a good example of an overpowered judiciary is what's happening to Trump. A state judge is doing everything in her power to keep a presidential candidate from campaigning. By definition, a single judge is now holding the entire presidential election hostage. Fundamentally, you would never actually think that this would need to be done, because it was assumed that the state would protect the state and the feds would protect the feds, so this basically wouldn't be possible. Because it's Trump, and because federal over-reach has taken place, the state protects the feds and the feds protect themselves.
Fundamentally, the correct solution to all this should be the impeachment process. That was the compromise here. A legislator or executive can't be charged with a crime until impeached. Once impeached and removed from office you can charge them with a crime. And to be clear, impeachment is explicitly a political process, not a judicial one. That's why the impeachment process is governed by Roberts Rules of Order (a legislative protocol), and not by standing Jurisprudence. It's why senators can ask leading questions and things like that; it's also why it's a removal from office, and not an actual conviction with a sentence.
There's a huge problem with this, and if you look carefully, it is why Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Caesar was actually going to be prosecuted for leading a violent storming of the senate chamber. He became consol explicitly because the senate couldn't charge him with a crime while as consol. When the Senate finally did reject his cosolship (he wasn't supposed to be consol by that time, his term had run out, but he kept pretending it hadn't), he realized that his political career would be over unless he removed the senate. So he did.
The Democrats are currently accusing Trump of literally doing this.
Your better question is, how do we hold these elected leaders accountable to the law when the courts keep protecting them? Fundamentally, these are political problems. It's political control over the courts, and political influence over them. The legislature needs to be cycled out more than it is, and the appointments for judges makes the judges friendly with the government.
I would argue re-structuring judicial appointments and even congressional elections by changing a lot of the voting system (things like that I don't want to go into detail on here), making impeachments easier and a more regular occurrence is a very good start. Congress never impeaches judges, and they have all the right in the world to, always have. Again, it's a political process, not a judicial one. If the appointment is political, than so is the removal. This is mostly because statists want the judiciary and the legislature to act in a synchronous manner so that there can be no challenge to the authority of the state. One of the best things that Trump ever (accidentally) did was get impeached twice. Presidents should be regularly impeached, because it drags them in front of the Senate to keep them accountable. The problem is that the Senate is elected, and not a representation of the states. So, you gotta change that 17th amendment. Judges should also be regularly impeached. No one should have a life appointment for a judge, not from term limits, but from political impeachments.
"That could make the government a bit dysfunctional because the political winds could sweep the government in and out"
Yes, that's the point. The point is the keep the government from being stable enough to tyrannize the public. The forced instability is what keeps the government from tyrannical. That's the nature of the deep state. It is "unstable" for the executive branch to purge itself every time there is a new president; but that is the most important function to keep the executive branch from tyrannizing you. If the president can't remove his predecessor's appointments, you guarantee a deep state.
"But an unstable government could destabilize society."
No, because the government should not be powerful enough to be the force of power in society; that is a tyranny. The government doesn't regulate society at all. It merely helps in compensation, and defense of the realm. The government must not be allowed to be the stabilizing force for society in the first place. Society must be stabilized by the moral character of it's people. Deferring morals to the state is the foundational failure.
The Founding Fathers, as radically liberal as they were, still believed that the state could be a moral force; as they themselves had repeatedly governed with careful respect to the care of their subjects, and to the posterity of their civilization. They really were "better men" than what we have, and that was their greatest mistake: thinking people would be as good of character them.
Strong government, weak people. Strong people, weak government.
Precisely.
A constitution isn't a collection of laws. It is the framework that the law resides in. It's like saying that a mathematical axiom is a law of mathematics. That's not actually true. An axiom is a pre-supposition of the mathematical framework that has to be assumed in order for the model to function. Mathematical theorems and laws are derived from the axioms. If the axiom is invalidated, the model fails, and the laws no longer makes sense logically. The constitution serves a similar purpose, it is the framework that makes laws possible. Without a constitution, you have no foundation of law to make laws over.
My pedantic argument stands that they may look like laws, but they are not laws. I don't think it's much of a point of contention, though.
As a constitutional amendment, is it not the highest law of the US?
It's not technically a "law" per se, because it's the framework of the law. It's a bit pedantic.
Pedantry? On KiA2?
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
:)