Incidentally, like most of these “let’s write a constitution” things, I get the sense the authors are not always entirely clear on what a Constitution is FOR.
There are some good ideas here, but the wording is often bizarrely poor.
Now I have time to advance to the next sentence.
To this end, they are entitled to the full range of democratic freedoms and rights, consistent with human dignity, including, the right to an education, personal autonomy, freedom of expression, assembly, and the press, the right to dignified labor, and the right to health, safety, and community.
I’m not comfortable saying every person is entitled to the right to personal autonomy. Nor the right to dignified labor. Nor the right to health. Nor the right to safety. Nor the right to community.
For example, how could a government impose quarantines, mandatory vaccinations, or other police powers if each person has a constitutionally guaranteed right to personal autonomy? Imposing a quarantine or mandating vaccination is necessarily an infringement on personal autonomy. Drafting a person into military service is an infringement on personal autonomy and safety. Shipping a draftee overseas infringes on their right to safety, community, and possibly health too. But I think the government should have those powers.
The human rights and freedoms defined in Article 1 of this Constitution shall bind the United States and every governmental subdivision thereof. The rights enumerated in Sections 2 through 11 are subject only to reasonable limitations prescribed by such laws that are necessary in a democratic society and compelled by the public interest.
Yet these ‘human rights and freedoms’, not to be confused with those enumerated in Sections 2 through 11, are binding upon all levels of government. Reasonable construction implies that human rights and freedoms cannot be reasonably limited by law according to compelling public interests.
So, specifically, mandatory vaccinations and military drafts are prohibited under all circumstances.
Congress shall have the primary power and duty to secure the rights established in this Article by appropriate legislation. […] Congress shall have the power and duty to identify and protect additional rights that are necessary in a free society and consistent with the public interest.
This is all still Article 1. I have above quoted two sentences that effectively give Congress unlimited power. What, are we going to have the Supreme Court second guess Congress on what is or is not necessary for a free society, or consistent with the public interest?
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to its jurisdiction.
Penal labor is abolished by this provision. I’m not well informed about the topic of penal labor but I want to point out the implication.
Everyone has the right to equal protection of the laws and equal rights under the law. […] Reasonable governmental measures designed to protect or advance groups disadvantaged by past discrimination are permitted.
Naturally, I think this is a contradiction. If a law singles out one group for protection, that is by definition not equal protection of the laws.
Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free.
As pointed out by RickJay, this is a significant provision. Contrast with the existing constitution’s copyright clause. (“The Congress shall have the Power […] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”)
I interpret it as binding upon the government only - an artist can refuse to give away his painting without payment, but the government isn’t allowed to punish people for merely copying his art. I am not dogmatically opposed to this provision but it is extremely radical and I would not support it without evidence that it would do good.
All persons shall have the right to freedom of association, autonomy in marriage, and reproductive freedom. Caregiving relationships between people shall be protected. Neither the federal nor the state governments shall unreasonably intrude upon the privacy of the home, personal relationships, or family life.
Yes, well personally I don’t think marriage should be intertwined with government at all. (I’m in the ‘civil unions for all, marriage is religious’ camp). And I would not interpret this guarantee of “reproductive freedom” so as to create a positive right to affordable contraception. If that was the goal, this provision needs revision. My interpretation of this is that if you have contraceptives and want to use them the government can’t stop you.
Barring exigency supported by probable cause, no government official may engage in a search or seizure except as specified in a warrant before a neutral magistrate. The warrant must be supported by an affidavit demonstrating probable cause to believe that the person seized is guilty of an offense or provides evidence of an offense, and is located in the place to be searched.
My read of this would make it impossible to authorize a search warrant unless the requesting officer shows probable cause to believe the perp is on-site. There is an exception for exigencies, but I don’t think that will cut it.
Imagine the perp murders someone then skips town. Officers have reason to believe there is a computer in a suspect’s house that will tell them where he fled. Officers cannot search the house because they would need a search warrant, which would require not only probable cause that the suspect committed some offense, but also probable cause that the suspect “is located in the place to be searched”.
No statement made by a suspect while in custody shall be admissible in the suspect’s trial or any subsequent proceedings unless the statement is made under oath in a public hearing contemporaneously recorded, before a magistrate, and with the advice of counsel; and unless the suspect is provided with access to all inculpatory and exculpatory material possessed by the government at the time of the statement.
This provision makes no exception for suspects in custody at the scene of the crime who volunteer information without their lawyer or a judge. If at least one suspect at the scene of the crime blurts “I killed him”, that little blurt is simultaneously inadmissible and exculpatory/inculpatory; it is impossible for a prosecutor to get any statement from any suspect admitted in any court for the rest of the investigation.
All criminal defendants shall have the right to effective assistance of competent counsel through all stages of a criminal proceeding, including at preliminary hearings, plea negotiations, trial, sentencing, appeal, and post-conviction review.
I do not interpret this as mandating the government to provide competent counsel, only as requiring the government to allow defendants to use their own counsel. This is reinforced by the following section which explicitly mandates the government to provide counsel at no cost for “indigent defendants”, and to provide counsel at reduced cost for defendants who cannot afford counsel. It does not follow that government provided counsel must be competent or effective, however. If that is the goal, these provisions need revision.
All persons shall have the right to work under equitable and safe conditions, and shall receive equal pay for equal work.
It is literally impossible to guarantee a right to work under equitable and safe conditions. Many essential jobs are inherently unsafe. Solid waste comes to mind. So do soldiers. Equal pay for equal work is likewise unenforcable without radical changes to how we track pay.
Workers shall be guaranteed freedom from unjustified dismissal
I cannot support this provision in a world where employees have the freedom to quit on their own accord. Historically speaking employment contracts were for a term of one or more fixed years, during which both employer and employee were bound by contract unless both agreed to sever the relationship.
And that’s as far as I am willing to entertain this incredibly radical thought experiment.
~Max, self-described conservative
If we start out with those personal rights. It doesn’t prevent the govt, from legislating restrictions on how individual rights manifest themselves against the backdrop of the greater good.
Then, if the govt needs to temporarily reign in those rights there needs to be some sort of consensus that this is the right thing to do.
As opposed to starting with a few vague rights and then having the Supreme Court (or whatever checking body is appointed) going through and weeding out the “bad laws” as they pop up.
In our current situation: the Right to Speech and Assembly as enumerated in the First Amendment doesn’t prohibit the govt from making reasonable restrictions on where, when and how that Right is exersized.
This stood out to me, while I am sympathetic to the motivation behind this passage, I think if you put much thought into it, this is actually extremely unworkable:
This law would also imperil any number of American Indian U.S. Citizens being summarily denied rights of basic citizenship, and even being subject to dictatorship and tyranny.
The linked constitution does prevent the government from legislating restrictions against the backdrop of the greater good. It says here’s human rights and freedoms (lists personal rights you quoted me on) then here’s other rights that the government is allowed to restrict for the greater good (lists more rights). Standard legal construction implies that the former, personal rights cannot be subjected to reasonable limitations.
~Max
hmmm…a rather humorous thread.
Since the entire continent was once the territory of the Indigenous Nations, I guess that means they are the only sovereign entity, and nobody else living there has citizenship in North America.*.
So why bother to write a constitution?
–…----…------
*. Kinda like the logic with which progressives view the Palestinian issue. 
[/sarcasm]
A Marxist pile of crap. I laughed at the Supreme Court declaring an act unconstitutional, suspended for 18 months, unless they specified that it was “manifestly” unconstitutional. Looks like it was written by a bunch of 19 year old communists doing bong hits.
I don’t see anything in this document protecting me from having soldiers quartered in my house without my consent, so to hell with the whole thing.
The same way it restricts free speech I’d imagine…
Pretty sure that’s exactly the goal…
It certainly is not workable as is, but it does have some interesting ideas to be debated.
It is interesting that some are considered to be show stoppers to some, but features to others.
The penal labor being one. I personally think that that is one of the things that would be pretty useful to have in a contemporary constitution, others don’t.
The idea that a democracy is a good thing is a feature to some, a bug to others.
The Senate seems to have lost almost all its power. It can delay the passage of bills by a month or so, and occasionally votes on non-legislative things. In many cases where it does do something, it’s “majority of the members of the House and the Senate”, which I read to mean a majority of the total. Given that House members outnumber Senators by 10 to 1 (or more), this makes the Senate approach a rounding error even when it has something to do.
I get that the Senate is a deeply undemocratic institution, but why bother having one if you’re not going to give it anything to do? Like, it’s ok to have a unicameral legislature. Keeping a Senate around that does nothing will not placate those who currently extract inordinate power from the Senate.
It feels like no one even took a second pass at the language. For example, in Article VIII, Section 1, it says “majority of the members of the House and the Senate” and in Section 2, it says “a majority in the House and the Senate”. Do those phrases mean the same thing? Does the first one mean a combined majority, and the second one mean a majority in each house separately? It’s not at all obvious. Is there a reason to do two different things here, or did no one care enough to even think this through? Seems like the latter.
I prefer to go the other way. I advocate for a pentacameral legislature.
I figure no one is going to be happy in the way that any branch of legislature is enacted, so give more options, that way, more people find a way to be represented.
I think you’re mostly joking here, but the problem with multiple legislatures is that each one is a veto point, and if you add enough of those, nothing gets done. The US already has more veto points than most modern democracies.
No, not joking, I’ve actually put a whole lot of thought into this.
Although I wouldn’t have any of them be a veto, I would have it require 3 of the 5 houses in order to pass a bill. 4 of the 5 houses to override a veto. The entire point would be to allow stuff to get done, even if one or two houses finds itself in gridlock.
Section 7 sort of highlights the very problematic way this would work in practice (just as an example):
All persons have the right to a decent standard of living. To secure this right, Congress shall build and maintain an economy that, through well-ordered labor markets and social provision, affords such a standard of living to all.
How in the world does a judge enforce this? If we debated this on the SDMB we would have as many opinions as posters. Can a judge order a tax cut or a tax increase? Order Congress to pass a law? What is a “decent” standard of living? Must a person who has the ability to work, work in order to have it? What is a “well-ordered” labor market?
Is private ownership of business abolished and we must have a Cuban style command economy? After call Congress shall “build and maintain” the labor market.
And before anyone says that our Constitution has ambiguous phrases like “due process of law” or a “well-regulated militia” remember that those terms, even at the time of the founding had hundreds of years of history behind them which could be researched and even if judges differ on close calls in close cases, they would get it right more often than not.
This glurge has no history behind it and nothing for an impartial judge to base something like a “decent” standard of living on besides a judge’s own personal belief as to what “decent” was to him or her. You might as well not have a Congress, but the Supreme Court would be deciding everything, especially if the judges felt really strong and considered the law “manifestly” unjust.
I know that this is just an exercise and not a serious proposal, but it is where the Dems are going with stuff today and that is very concerning.
No it’s not, and it should only be concerning that people think that this is reflective of where Democrats are going, as it really isn’t.
You mean you aren’t seriously creating a new constitution or don’t believe these policy statements? Because it sounds like something that Bernie would be all in favor of.
Both. Some are good ideas that could be workable if fleshed out and turned into some sort of actual framework rather than essentially the wishful thinking that they are, and others are not really workable no matter the wording you chose to put behind them.
I’m not sure that’s the case, but even if it were, Bernie’s still not a Democrat.
Political question doctrine. The provision is binding on Congress and it’s up to Congress (and the electorate) to hold Congress accountable to its mission.
~Max