What's so good about the constitution?

Yeah, "general Welfare of the United States" is not clear at all. It could include anything that sort of sounds like it might be in the best interest of the United States which is a union of governments, not of people. Sometimes It's tempting to get frustrated with its framers, wishing they'd used more precise language in some places, but that wouldn't do any good either because there are parts of it that could hardly be any more clear and the gov still ignores, and most people get wrong too.

I doubt anyone can get all these right. According to your understanding of the text of the constitution(not your knowledge of constitutional law), please answer true or false:

_____ 1) In time of war, a federal statute may be passed prohibiting citizens from revealing military secrets to the enemy.

_____ 2) The President may issue an executive order prohibiting public criticism of his administration.

_____ 3) Congress may pass a law prohibiting museums from exhibiting photographs and paintings depicting homosexual activity.

_____ 4) A federal statute may be passed prohibiting a citizen from falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

_____ 5) Congress may pass a law prohibiting dancing to rock and roll music.

_____ 6) The Internal Revenue Service may issue a regulation prohibiting the publication of a book explaining how to cheat on your taxes and get away with it.

_____ 7) Congress may pass a statute prohibiting flag burning.

 

Fairly easy actually.1 yes 2. He can but the courts will strike it down. 3.They did so the courts over ruled. 4.True 5. Never done federally but it has been done in many cities at one time or the other, the coursts have rendered it constitutionally dubious. 6.There have actually been several people try this, people who have actually tried their advice have almost always been caught and fined, the authors of such tracts who have gone to jail are those who have taken their own bad advice. 7. Been done the courts have ruled it unconstitutional.

Inshort congress can and has done about anything it pleases the courts however can and have rendered many of these attempts moot.

 

I'm sorry, I left out the instructions.

It's not looking for answers to whether those things have been done or what would happen if they were done, but the answers should just be on the basis of your personal understanding of the constitution and the sentences' meaning (not your knowledge of constitutional law).

 

Right, but, on 5, 6 and 7, for example, do you find them allowable according to the constitution or not?

 

I like this thread. I love discussing the constitution. I'm just not quite sure I understand the rules of the game.

Is this an overall interpretation or honing in on these specific examples and my thoughts on them?

 

The rules are to answer according to your personal understanding of the constitution and the questions.

The end will be to show that people don't agree on the meaning of many statements in the constitution even though the meanings of all the words making them up are relatively uncontroversial.

 

1. Congress wouldn't have to pass a law about revealing military secrets. It already exists. It is called the Espionage Act.
2. The 1st Amendment prohibits the government from abrogating our rights to free speech.
3. Museums are private entities. Congress cannot tell private entities what they may display and what they cannot display unless the creation of the photographs or paintings affect the rights of others during their production, i.e. child pornography.
4. No federal statute prohibits anyone from falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater. Government cannot exercise prior restraint on speech. The person who dies this can be charged with lots of other crimes, however. Reckless endangerment, negligent homicide, breaking the peace, etc. But these are all state or local crimes, not federal.
5. Again, the federal government cannot prohibit what is done by private citizens in private unless it affects the rights of others. State governments can.
6. Again, 1st Amendment rules.
7. See the 1st Amendment

 

To be honest, some of them, I'm not really sure about. 3, 5 and 7 could be banned by the first amendment, but only if we interpret "speech" or "press" to include photographs, paintings, dancing, and flag burning. Then again, powers of congress are enumerated, and I don't know where they get the power to make laws about paintings and dancing. It could very well be said to be to the general welfare of the US government to prohibit flag burning. IDk

 

I agree it's not nationalistic enough. Once we control a few more states we should have a constitutional convention to change the constitution into an unequivocally far right wing nationalist document.

 

The problem in almost all cases in my opinion has to do with level of responsibility. 5 would be mom and dad's responsibility not the government's. 6. If we are going to jail people for giving bad advice we are going to need a lot more jail space. 7 is arguable in either direction. I don't like it but I am not necessarily willing to jail everyone who does things I don't like.

 

I believe you are missing the main strengths of the Constitution, which are as follows:
(1) The document is meant to limit the power of the federal government.
(2) The document is meant to partition the powers of the federal government within three distinct branches, each of which has a specific domain / function.
(3) The document is meant to be a living document, meaning that it can (and should) be changed over time.

The fact that people disagree about the implications of what the document says is neither here nor there. Heck, look at the number of 5/4 decisions passed down by the high court, and realize that those decisions could very easily have gone the other way, and some of the most compelling reasoning is often to be found in the dissenting opinion(s)...

 

The Espionage Act is an act of congress. According to your understanding of the constitution, does the constitution authorize congress to write it, or not?

The first amendment says "congress shall make no law...". Question 2 asks about the president.

Does the first amendment prohibit a federal statute against yelling "fire" in a crowded theater?

On 6, are you interpreting "congress" to mean "internal revenue service"?

 

Knock yourself out.

 

Short version the US Constitution created three equal branches of government then spelled out in the Bill of Rights certain rights all citizens have which the government can never take away.

Pretty cool for dudes in 1778 don't you think?

 

1. The Espionage Act *is* Constitutional. It has been considered several times by the Supreme Court so it is not just my opinion.
2. The President doesn't make law. EO's are only implementation guides for how to execute laws passed by Congress. So the ability for the President to ban speech for *anyone* would first have to be passed as a law by Congress -- which is prohibited by he 1st Amendment.
4. As I explained, government cannot exercise prior restraint on speech, and that includes the federal government. Since the federal government is not given the power of local law enforcement by the Constitution, such a law would be struck down by the Supreme Court as an usurpation of State powers prohibited by the 10th Amendment.
6. Regulations can only be issued to implement laws passed by Congress. There is no law existing today allowing anyone in the federal government to institute censorship of such material, not even the IRS. Such a regulation would be struck down by the courts as unConstitutional.

 

I guess you could say it's cool. I don't know if it's anything to hold religious reverence for or pledge one's allegiance to before one is even old enough to know what allegiance, or it, really is.

 

I'm asking what YOU think. I know what the courts have said, or can find find out without your help. Can you understand what is written in the constitution and apply that understanding to an real or hypothetical act of congress?

 

People should get a pocket version of the Constitution and read it out loud to themselves. There's nothing in there about impeaching Trump for being on friendly terms with Putin. He's your president even if you're a Trump denier.

 

Friggin wonderful.

Jackboots for all

 

Agreed. It's a wet dream almost better than sex.

 

You can't even get people to agree that the BoR represents individual rights.

 

Imagine the following scene. A first-year contracts course is being taught at the prestigious Harvard Law School. The professor is a distinguished scholar with a national reputation as one of the leading experts on Anglo-American contract law. Let's call him Professor Kingsfield. He instructs his class to research the following hypothetical for the next day.

A woman living in a rural setting becomes ill and calls her family physician, who is also the only local doctor, for help. However, it is Wednesday, the doctor's day off and because she has a golf date, she does not respond. The woman's condition worsens and because no other physician can be procured in time, she dies. Her estate then sues the doctor for not coming to her aid. Is the doctor liable?

Two of the students, Arnie Becker and Ann Kelsey, resolve to make a good impression on Kingsfield should they be called on to discuss the case. Arnie is a somewhat conservative, considerably egocentric individual. He believes that doctors are human beings, who like anyone else, are entitled to a day off, and that it would be unfair to require them to be at the beck and call of their patients. For this reason, his initial impression of the solution to the hypothetical is that the doctor should not be liable. Through his research, he discovers the case of Hurley v. Eddingfield, (6) which establishes the rule that in the absence of an explicit contract, i.e., when there has been no actual meeting of the minds, there can be no liability. In the hypothetical, there was clearly no meeting of the minds. Therefore, Arnie concludes that his initial impression was correct and that the doctor is not legally liable. Since he has found a valid rule of law which clearly applies to the facts of the case, he is confident that he is prepared for tomorrow's class.

Ann Kelsey is politically liberal and considers herself to be a caring individual. She believes that when doctors take the Hippocratic oath, they accept a special obligation to care for the sick, and that it would be wrong and set a terrible example for doctors to ignore the needs of regular patients who depend on them. For this reason, her initial impression of the solution to the hypothetical is that the doctor should be liable. Through her research, she discovers the case of Cotnam v. Wisdom, (7) which establishes the rule that in the absence of an explicit contract, the law will imply a contractual relationship where such is necessary to avoid injustice. She believes that under the facts of the hypothetical, the failure to imply a contractual relationship would be obviously unjust. Therefore, she concludes that her initial impression was correct and that the doctor is legally liable. Since she has found a valid rule of law which clearly applies to the facts of the case, she is confident that she is prepared for tomorrow's class.

The following day, Arnie is called upon and presents his analysis. Ann, who knows she has found a sound legal argument for exactly the opposite outcome, concludes that Arnie is a typical privileged white male conservative with no sense of compassion, who has obviously missed the point of the hypothetical. She volunteers, and when called upon by Kingsfield criticizes Arnie's analysis of the case and presents her own. Arnie, who knows he has found a sound legal argument for his position, concludes that Ann is a typical female bleeding-heart liberal, whose emotionalism has caused her to miss the point of the hypothetical. Each expects Kingsfield to confirm his or her analysis and dismiss the other's as the misguided bit of illogic it so obviously is. Much to their chagrin, however, when a third student asks, "But who is right, Professor?," Kingsfield gruffly responds, "When you turn that mush between your ears into something useful and begin to think like a lawyer, you will be able to answer that question for yourself" and moves on to another subject.

What Professor Kingsfield knows but will never reveal to the students is that both Arnie's and Ann's analyses are correct. How can this be?

 

We have many points of view...

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon. --George Washington

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. --John Adams

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race. --Calvin Coolidge

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. --Abraham Lincoln

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. --James K. Polk

This Constitution was not made for a day, nor is it composed of such flexible materials as to be warped to the purposes of a casually ascendant influence. --John Tyler

The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree. --Edward Kennedy

The U.S. constitution is an extraordinary document. In my view, it should not be amended often. --Bernie Sanders

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012. --Ruth Bader Ginsburg

What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional? --Antonin Scalia






Based on logic and definitions of words in the English language, these are probably the correct answers. Some are disagreeable in practice and require lawyers to bend the meaning of words to fit their time and narrative...

___F__ 1) In time of war, a federal statute may be passed prohibiting citizens from revealing military secrets to the enemy.

___T__ 2) The President may issue an executive order prohibiting public criticism of his administration.

___T__ 3) Congress may pass a law prohibiting museums from exhibiting photographs and paintings depicting homosexual activity.

___F__ 4) A federal statute may be passed prohibiting a citizen from falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

___T__ 5) Congress may pass a law prohibiting dancing to rock and roll music.

___T__ 6) The Internal Revenue Service may issue a regulation prohibiting the publication of a book explaining how to cheat on your taxes and get away with it.

___T__ 7) Congress may pass a statute prohibiting flag burning

 

Even if people don't see it (or understand). Your post in itself is what's great about the Constitution. I hope that is understood.

 

The results of the Constitution speak for themselves.