If you could completely re-write the US Constitution, what would it look like?

All this talk of "Human Rights" from so many posters.

Not that I am against human rights (or motherhood or apple pie for that matter) but it seems as if the challenge is defining exactly what is a human right. Simply saying we should err on the side of granting people rights or that we shall not trade with a nation that violates human rights doesn't seem to mean all that much without being able to define these rights (IMHO).

anton chigurh wrote:

An Historian wrote:

And before any of you people, right and left, who just love to bloviate about homosexuality hijack the thread, I am not arguing one way or the other about whether homosexual sex, or any other activity, should be protected under the Constitution, but only that there are rights that are protected by the Constitution that are not mentioned in said document, e.g. gay sex. If you can find any right to gay sex mentioned in the Constitution, or to straight sex or nose picking, I will eat my shoe!

This is specifically what the 9th ammendment is for.

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

I don't think that is the purpose, actually. The 9th amendment confers no additional rights. The 9th amendment doesn't even say that additional rights must exist. The only thing it does (and it's an important thing) is eliminate one form of legal argument. The argument "It's not in the Constitution, therefore it's not a right" is officially bogus. However, that doesn't mean that the thing in question actually *is* a right, just that you can't use the fact that it's not in the Constitution as your argument.

At least, that's my opinion. There is some debate on the matter.

TCB wrote:

You are completely wrong. If a libertarian party can get 8% of the vote in a general election, then it will get 8% of the seats in the legislature and other parties will have to cooperate with them to get things done. Right now, there needs to be a strong concentration of libertarians in one district to get a seat in congress. Locality thus becomes irrelevant, people stop strategically voting and vote the way they want because it actually does make a difference in government.

I'm curious about the actual working of proportional representation. Say, as you mentioned 8% of the population votes Libertarian. Of the current 435 Representatives in the House, that gives 34.8 Reps (ok, let's say 35). Who actually then chooses the representatives? Where do they come from? Does the party choose them or the people? Then you have fighting between Florida's Lib Rep and New York's Lib Rep getting to be one of the Reps in Congress, right?

I love the prospect of this, because we DAMN WELL NEED to get rid of the piece of shit two party system we have. But, how would it work?

jfdisaopghrag wrote:

All this talk of "Human Rights" from so many posters.

Not that I am against human rights (or motherhood or apple pie for that matter) but it seems as if the challenge is defining exactly what is a human right. Simply saying we should err on the side of granting people rights or that we shall not trade with a nation that violates human rights doesn't seem to mean all that much without being able to define these rights (IMHO).

The best way to protect human rights is to limit the power of government. Governments are the biggest violators of human rights thoughtout the world. By limiting the power of government you actual eliminate the need to define an exhaustive list of rights to be defended.

(Note: nobody needs to bring up the example of Somalia, although I tend towards libertarianism I am not an absolutist and am not an anarchist).

For the national legislative branch, I would institute a proportional voting system based on party; each voter would then also vote for the candidates they wished to get the seats of the party they voted for based on range voting. (This would combine the primary and general election; you have to vote for the party you select the candidates for the candidate votes to count. Locality also becomes irrelevant in national elections). Because this process takes more time, I would keep election day as a Tuesday but make it a national holiday as well. (I would keep it as a Tuesday so people don't start using it as a three day weekend). Each party and candidate would be required to submit their platform, and this platform would be provided to voters (if they so chose to read it) at each polling station.

That should do away with the evil two party system.

I would actually specify filibuster rules in the Senate: I would say that once a speaker has been silent for 60 seconds, he has ceded the floor. (You have to do a real filibuster if you want to filibuster).

I would do away with the electoral college. Presidential elections would be decided by the people with a range voting system. (In the particular range voting system I would use, each voter would be able to rate each candidate from 0 to 10. Each rating point would count as a vote for that candidate. You could give several candidates 10 votes each, you could give several zero, you could give them each any integer value between 0 and 10. This would do away with most strategic voting).

Otherwise I like the constitution as it is now.

Most countries use PR to form governments. The biggest ones are Japan and Germany. Sweden also uses it and usually scores the highest in democracy indexes. There are several ways of doing it, the most common is party lists where the parties choose who their members will be before the election and then the people further down the list get their seats as the part gets a higher proportion of the vote. So in a legislature with 100 seats, a social democratic party that receives 43% of the votes will get 43 seats and the first 43 people on their party list get a seat. There is usually a threshold of about 5% to keep fringe parties out (so Nazis and Islamic extremists won't get a seat). I think a better way to do it would be to vote for individuals who then have proportional voting power in the legislature. Therefore, I could vote for Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner no matter where I live and if Pelosi gets 13.26% of the national vote, she would have that amount of voting power while voting for bills. Don't worry about anyone getting too powerful, there is a lot of other things to prevent that from happening. I've thought it through. Also, the person with the most voting power gets to form an executive cabinet, which would likely contain the next few most powerful members regardless of party.

Yeah we definitely need all that stuff about blacks being 3/5ths of a person so we can remember what type of jerks the founding fathers were.Off the top of my head-Term limits for supreme court justices. Make it something like 20 years.-Clarify the 2nd amendment. Is it militias or should everyone be allowed to own rocket launchers for self defense.-Direct election of the president. If 50% of americans want someone to be president, they should be president. It shouldn't matter where they live.-And what the hell an admendment legalizing prostitution, recreation drug use and gambling.

P.Whelan wrote:

I wouldn't change a thing. Maybe update the language a little.

I would just like to point out that a lot of suggested changes are matters of Federal statutory law rather than Constitutional law, and could be changed without changing the Constitution. An example is ending the tax-exempt status of religious organizations.

I disagree. It should be UN-Constitutional for the gov't or people to have economic trade, banking, military sales, military cooperation, diplomatic cooperation with any country which doesn't have Human Rights for every person under it's domain civilian or military.

So that means countries with Sharia Law, Zionism, Apartheid, Communism, Nazis, Facists, etc would cease to have a wide range of relations with the United States. And any US citizen would be committing a felony by having relations. But it would be constitutional to have an embassy in those countries, sign peace treaties, Nuclear cleaunp, and Nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

It would be short.

And very poorly written.

Bear Arms!!

Red Paper with black type. And Photos. Yes that would spruce it up.

I would also write it in Greek. So you would have to be able to read Greek. That should limit a whole bunch of folks from public office.

The problem is that some of the things people think of as "rights" violations are things that other people want. In the US, there are very few basic human rights violations (i.e life, food, shelter, freedom from slavery).the problem comes with everything after that:Is legalizing abortion a right violation?What about banning burning trash?What takes precedence your right to play crappy music really loud or my right not to hear it?We all draw these lines at different points. The libertarian (this isn't a left/right as define by modern politics. Both parties right now want to run your life, they just want to control different things) count on the individual to make smart choices, the authoritarians realize the average person is an idiot.

The Human Right of women to decide her Reproductive functions shall not be abridged by the Government nor any person

The Government shall not impose any laws, rules, and procedures upon any foreign land that it does not impose on it's own domestic citizens and inhabitants

All in all, the original is awfully good.

If we were starting from scratch, knowing what we know now, then many of the amendments which "fixed" issues unknown to the founding fathers (12th) or have evolved over time (26th, 20th, 23rd) would be in the original. Also, if we were starting now without the constraints they had in 1787, there would be no slave trade or 3/5 compromise, and no slavery at all, so no need for the 13th amendment. Probably the 14th would be wrapped into the original, and the 15th (and 20th) would be incorporated into an early clause stipulating that "voters" is inclusive.

The changes I would not have made would be the 17th amendment, the 18th/21st, and probably not the 26th. I think we should still have an income tax, but I would write that in such a way as to limit the ability of congresscritters and special interests to use the tax code as a honey pot which favors groups or behaviors they like. I would also like term limits on congress, and either a balanced budget requirement or at least some reasonable limitation on borrowing.

I actually like the electoral college; I think it's one of Madison's greatest hits.

It wasn't rewritten but re-interpreted from the moment it was written.

Alexander Hamilton as secretary of state even proposed legislation that the federal government assume the states debts for the rev war.

Thus the first great expansion of the federal government.

Here you go, enjoy:

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

(Not that hard, was it?)

It would be illegible because my handwriting sucks. My handwriting is worse than Dracula's from Bram Stroker's Dracula.

I am curious why you like the electoral college? The original was a disaster (Jefferson versus Burr) requiring the 12th amendment. The current one allows candidates to ignore huge numbers of voters (you ignore the states where you or you opponent have 55% of the vote) in favor of appealing to special interests in swing states.

gamecock wrote:

I actually like the electoral college; I think it's one of Madison's greatest hits.