> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it.
It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement. If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense. The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and procedures that the the country and government have decided to follow voluntarily, not because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
> The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of the constitution.
That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment. Many violations of the Constitution or Bill of Rights aren't clear until some court case interprets some action as not being in compliance. Would you have every county clerk that ever denied a same-sex marriage license or defined procedures to do so go to jail after Obergefell v. Hodges?
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
Actually, it's nonsense to think anything to the contrary. Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't. Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
> The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and procedures that the the country and government have decided to follow voluntarily, not because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
It's not a document of 'norms' and 'procedures'. It's a structure of how our Republic is built. Either we have a structure or we undermine it. That's really it, full stop. Amendments are apart of that structure to build or take away for what that structure is to be. Not 'ought to be' not 'suggested' not 'maybe if you'd like to follow', it's a mutually agreed upon Law.
>Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't.
Nitpick, the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole Articles of Confederation thing.
Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not. The courts are. Congress and the Supreme Court commonly disagree on the constitutionality of laws. What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy lead by the Supreme Court.
>Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
There is no social contract based on the constitution. It's just that enough people agree that it has value, so it does. That's not a social contract. No regular people voted on the Constitution. You don't have the ability to reject it if you don't agree with it.
> the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole Articles of Confederation thing.
This isn't a nitpick, this is simply irrational. The Articles of Confederation were the founding document of an institution called the "league of friendship," and although the Constitution inherits ideas from the Articles, they have no legal bearing on the latter. They're out of scope.
Meanwhile, the Constitution literally constitutes the foundations of an institution called "the U.S. federal government" which, discounting some rather academic Theseus' Ship arguments, is what governs us, today.
The constitution was no the first document written on this continent, but it is the last document in which we've invested our collective institution-reifying intention at the national level.
> What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy lead by the Supreme Court.
Overall agree that we shouldn't be throwing members of Congress in jail over good-faith disagreements of constitutionality, etc.
However, "Supreme Court oligarchy" is a stretch. Even if their rulings could send lawmakers to jail.
Amending the Constitution is always an option, and that's a 100% Legislative (Federal + 38 States) action that neither the courts nor the President can block.
With enough consensus, the Legislature (and by proxy, the electorate) technically have all the power.
1. Constitutional + simple majority + Presidential support = law.
2. Constitutional + 2/3 majority = law.
3. Unconstitutional + 2/3 majority + 38 states = law.
But, broad consensus among the electorate is hard to come by these days, especially on contentious issues.
Instead, both parties rail against "activist judges", stack the courts every opportunity they get, and regularly pass laws/programs with debatable constitutionality to constantly push the boundaries.
This is likely the correct "play to win" strategy too. I just wish people played the game as intended.
So, definitely understand the appeal for some sort of "punishment" against bad faith lawmaking, etc. Even if untenable in reality.
Nitpick. The people who were sent as representatives from each state to help write and ratify the constitution were chosen by the people of that state. So technically, through representative democracy, the regular people did agree to the constitution because their representatives agreed on it.
Not the same thing IMO. Ignoring the issue of who was allowed to vote in the 1780s, there's a reason why the House was voted on by the people and the Senate the state legislatures. They recognized then the two groups have different interests.
> Colan R said: So technically, through representative democracy, the regular people did agree to the constitution because their representatives agreed on it.
>> xxpor said: Not the same thing IMO.
It actually is. This country is not a direct democracy. You are trying to reinterpret the structure of this Republic. The people through their votes uphold the structure every time they vote. It's a collective decision (social contract) to have our vote to have representation and we 'trust' (for lack of a better term) said Rep. to perpetuate the ability of governing.
State Senators were still voted on by the People, and part of the vote of confidence for taking part in the State Senate was a recognition of their capability to choose who represented the State at the National level based on understanding of the State's business.
To be honest, I kind of wonder whether it was better to let the State Legislature decide. Wasn't alive then though and haven't done the research.
> State Senators were still voted on by the People...I kind of wonder whether it was better to let the State Legislature decide.
It seems you don't understand the difference between how the people directly elected US Senators since 1913 versus a State Republic that was voted on.
These are two very different things. I say very because one is more Democratic and the other is more Republic. A Republic is an indirect mechanism whereas Democratic is a direct mechanism.
Who do you think was allowed to vote to choose those people? Only free men who owned land. That was a very, very small fraction of the population of the colonies/US at the time. These were hardly "regular people".
>Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not.
Actually, the legislative branch is the final authority on what is Constitutional or not. Who do you think proposes, passes, organizes Constitutional Conventions, and ratifies Amendments?
It certainly isn't the Courts. Heck, judicial review isn't even enshrined in the Constitution, It just arose spontaneously out of case law; and everyone has been okay with it by and large such that there hasn't been the will to pass a "no judicial review" Amendment.
I mean, it seems silly to talk about, but it is right there. Though yes, for the last 200 year's, the Supreme Court striking down something as unconstitutional has generally been accepted as burying something six feet under politically, because no one in their right mind wants to carry the mark of "The person who changed the Constitution just to invalidate a Supreme Court decision."
>Nitpick, the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole Articles of Confederation thing.
Let's totally 'nitpick' because the structure that our entire government is built upon the Constitution. "The first, The Articles of Confederation, was in effect from March 1, 1781, when Maryland ratified it. The second, The Constitution, replaced the Articles when it was ratified by New Hampshire on June 21, 1788." [1]
If this 7 year gap is something that's causing you issues, just know that today that we aren't judged by 1900 laws. We're judged by the living document called the Constitution, as it 'replaced the Articles when it was ratified', and auxiliary laws via State/Local govts. But the backbone is the Constitution.
>Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not. The courts are.
In theory, sure. But Dred Scott said one thing (no Black person is free, even in the North) and the people in the North said something else with their 2nd amendment rights.
>What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy lead by the Supreme Court.
Actually I'm not. A law can (and in many cases, already does) include what appropriate punishments should be for a law that is broken.
> There is no social contract based on the constitution. It's just that enough people agree that it has value, so it does. That's not a social contract. No regular people voted on the Constitution. You don't have the ability to reject it if you don't agree with it.
These statements are entirely false.
1) Your first sentence and your second sentence are contradicting each other. ~'no social contract' vs ~'what a social contract is'.
2) As for the latter two sentences. We vote everyday with our citizenship. You either agree to that living document or you don't by your allegiance. No one is forcing you to be a US citizen ruled by Constitution, namely after an adult legal age. Constitution is just American's structure, it can be changed but within it's already given framework. The country could become a Communist rule of law, if it got ratified, whether an individual liked it or not.
> We vote everyday with our citizenship. You either agree to that living document or you don't by your allegiance. No one is forcing you to be a US citizen
You say that like anyone can just up and walk away. Where are you going to go? The borders are closed. If they weren't, they're going to want your tax money for a while, and if you don't like that you'll be deported and imprisoned. Disagree with any of that enough at any stage and your citizenship will be enforced with violence and death if need be.
No the US government is just unreasonably burdensome about releasing their snooping privileges on you. As an ex-pat the amount of demands the US puts on me is quite extreme compared to some of my fellow ex-pat coworkers from Mexico, Australia and Brazil.
The US demands ongoing duplication of information which they already have access to due to international income sharing laws and has an expectation for a portion of the income I earn entirely overseas. The only thing I get in return is the ability to "reactivate" my citizenship at will, but that's only because it costs about 7k to actually revoke your citizenship and your taxes are going to get reeeeeally closely audited for any missing back-taxes.
>> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
> Actually, it's nonsense to think anything to the contrary. Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't. Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
Huh? You're right that the Constitution defines the social contract, but it's still nonsense that violations by branches of the government itself should result in jail time. Checks and balances is supposed to ensure compliance, and honestly any attempt to add jail time to the mix would probably have all kinds of disastrous consequences to the balance of those checks. If this governmental system is to by dynamic enough to survive, its parts need the ability to probe the boundaries as needed. That can't happen if the people who make them up are paralyzed in personal fear of being jailed for a misstep. The framers themselves recognized that, since the Constitution isn't full of threats of criminal penalties. Even impeachment is deliberately just a removal from office.
> It's not a document of 'norms' and 'procedures'. It's a structure of how our Republic is built.
It's both of those things. If all the branches of government conspired to violate the Constitution, all that would happen is the country enters into an undefined state. If they were willing to do that, do you think they'd enforce penalties of jail against themselves for their violations? The Constitution itself isn't going to leap out of its case to arrest them.
> If they were willing to do that, do you think they'd enforce penalties of jail against themselves for their violations? The Constitution itself isn't going to leap out of its case to arrest them.
The people will, though. As I mentioned elsewhere, the final authority in the US are the people who chose their representatives in the government. If the highest level of government decides to break the law, then the people themselves enforce it.
> honestly any attempt to add jail time to the mix would probably have all kinds of disastrous consequences to the balance of those checks. If this governmental system is to by dynamic enough to survive, its parts need the ability to probe the boundaries as needed. That can't happen if the people who make them up are paralyzed in personal fear of being jailed for a misstep.
> The framers themselves recognized that, since the Constitution isn't full of threats of criminal penalties. Even impeachment is deliberately just a removal from office.
I separated the quotes to add emphasis.
The founders leaned very much in the direction of aristocratic, not all but it was the prevailing thought hence Republic instead of direct democracy.
As for the 'disastrous consequences', 'Constitution isn't full of threats', and 'impeachment is deliberately just a removal from office'.
I understand your points and they are historically accurate. One can see through the 'norm' that was created by President Ford pardoning President Nixon, that this understanding persists even in more recent history.
My words are a desire to see an amendment/law/ruling to go further in holding these leaders of our government accountable. As it's toxic to maintaining the social contract within our society, IMHO. If we are lenient on political corruption, even the foundations will crumble, IMHO.
The solution here is on fixing the parties/elections not imposing penalties on office holders. Higher quality candidates need to be on the ballot and make their way into office.
>The founders leaned very much in the direction of aristocratic...
Besides Hamilton, they absolutely did not. They were just anti-direct-democratic because they were well aware of the logistical problems, and structural ills of prior democracies. There is no concept of "Nobility" in the United States. We have Civil Servants. People who as a consequence of their office, in many ways have much higher legal exposure than the normal citizen. All Citizens may take any office with only mild qualifications on Age, literacy, and how one is chosen to get there.
That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic. That leaning is a much more recent thing that has emerged out of nearly half a century of political and economic consolidation through wage stagnation and technological advancement paired with a complete dismantling of top-to-bottom wealth redistribution, whether by market forces/government action notwithstanding.
>>My words are a desire to see an amendment/law/ruling to go further in holding these leaders of our government accountable. As it's toxic to maintaining the social contract within our society, IMHO. If we are lenient on political corruption, even the foundations will crumble, IMHO.
The founders actually culturally understood this believe it or not. If you look back in history, you can find numerous examples of incitement to refuse to engage in base behavior in executing the duties of office. It isn't universal, but the examples are relatively generous in frequency of having been recorded. You can also find many of the Founders personal papers and nuggets of wisdom warning that there is no greater danger to the Union than to the undermining of it's legitimacy through unwise or impulsive action or political theater.
Abraham Lincoln came to treat his responsibility to the country as something close to religious. Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all realized that a State would only last as long as the people running it could comport themselves as more-than-a-person in the fulfillment of their duties to the populace, and that the populace remained United in their respect and maintenance of each other's liberties, even in the face of taking on personal risk for the preservation of their fellow man's freedom.
Lincoln himself saw litigation and to a point legislation as a fundamental breakdown. The raising of an exception, if you will, of such a magnitude that it took the body of the Nation coordinated through it's elected Government to resolve the ill so rampant that not even a town could alone fix the issue.
How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men? Land owners of a certain acreage, looks like only 6% of the population fit that bill [1].
These people were a bit contradicting. 'All men' didn't mean all men. It meant all, white land owners. Also, to be clear, the founders and early civil servants were upper-middle-class British that moved to America to...have their stab at trying to become upper-class.
I'm not sure how you quantify (facts/evidence) your statement that "That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic". As this would be considered historic revisionism. Aristocratic might not be the most precise word (elitism goes too extreme) but it gets close enough to the vein of truth to understand my point. Selected few men, rule over the masses, by design.
> The founders actually culturally understood this believe it or not.
I wholeheartedly agree with this entire point you made here. I would go even further that the founders rigorously debated my point of govt officials accountability and they settled with the three branches as sufficient. But they intentionally left the door open for later terms to legislate/adjudicate which is again what I'm advocating for.
>How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men? Land owners of a certain acreage, looks like only 6% of the population fit that bill [1].
Aristocratic comes with way more baggage than what you describe; and you only have to look at jolly old England to see that. To be an Aristocrat. You had to be landed, but you also had to fit somewhere in the Peerage or established Nobility. That whole system of class stratification? That came with an entire Parliamentry House in the form of the House of Lords.
Where you ended up with the privilege 0f being a 0art of it being determined entirely on whether you were born in "aristocratic class".
That was quite literally considered the norm in most European countries at the time. Nobility was mum. Some Men just had a better lot in life. You got born into it, and it came with an entirely different social scene, responsibilities, perks, culture etc from 80 to 90% of the rest of the population. That was normal. If you were in, you had weight in policymaking far beyond the common man, you were Nobility. You could read, you could count, your family had proved their mettle, you were a treasure "revered" by your National edifice by definition, because you were noticed.
Then this crazy colonial bunch of States pops up, and all you have to do to have a say. Or participate in a major way in running the place is to get some land (cheap, and basically free in the sense you won it with sweat equity in those days), not be a slave to the regional authorities, and be able to show up to your communities meetings. That's it. If you were literate, you could end up getting picked to hoof it off to Congress, which at that time didn't pay anywhere near as generously as it does now, and would have to leave your life in the hands of your family, for weeks at a time. This was revolutionary at the time. Was there racism? Yes, absolutely, but there was no Aristocracy. There was no hard division of the classes of citizen like you'd get elsewhere. The landholding requirement was not onerous like it is now, and in fact, our history is filled with dead National Banks in part because people realized that they tended to disrupt the egalitarian baseline since financial institutions like such tend to end up being resource consolidation points away from the individual Citizen. Jeffersonian Democrats were particularly sensitive toward this issue. Even Hamilton at his worst imagined not an official Nobility, but that events would inevitably conspire to generate a class of "Merchant Princes" in America whose wealth allowed the to devote resources to exercising an oversized influence in the operation of Government, a reality we are arguably seeing, but has actively been fought against at other times in our history. We've had 100% tax rates in the United States.
The whole "no blacks" arose not out of a formal Aristocracy, but out of the set of compromises that kept the country operating as a single unit. The South needed it to stay functioning. And even then, for the time, it was revolutionary as wide a swath of the population had as recognizable a chunk of input as they did. Over time, things have only gotten more accessible, but they had to start somewhere. From the standpoint of a fledgling bunch of ex-colonies banding together, that made sense.
Get land? Cool, you aren't going anywhere, enjoy your vote. You didn't have phones for pools, mails and mass printing for distribution of campaign materials, and you had to have your affairs in order enough to have the "leisure time" to meaningfully participate. They basically wrote down as a requirement as broad a se f ignition of voting base as wasn't unworkable controversial at the time.
> Aristocratic comes with way more baggage than what you describe; and you only have to look at jolly old England to see that. To be an Aristocrat. You had to be landed, but you also had to fit somewhere in the Peerage or established Nobility. That whole system of class stratification? That came with an entire Parliamentry House in the form of the House of Lords.
You never answered my question, "How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men?"
My point still stands as historically sound. The founders/govt were upper-middle class by England's standards and they recreated a very similar aristocratic structure here in the 13 colonies but with the founders at the top.
My point can also be supported by how State Legistatures would pick Senators, the electoral college, lifetime appointments to SCOTUS, lack of term limits on Congress and POTUS. These are all putting power in a select few. The select few aren't as wealthy as England's elites but the founders were very rich (the elite of American society).
Apologies for all the typos by the way. Trying to get these written during breaks/downtime, and Autocorrect is making life interesting.
>You never answered my question, "How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men?"
I actually did, but the typos may have minced it. You say they created a System where the vote only went to "certain white men". You're not really appreciating how wide that swath was. I offered the example of the House of Lords (peopled by actual aristocrats) as a contrast point.
The Peerage and Nobility is intrinsically woven into the concept and definition of English social and civic life. There is no 1:1 mapping of that same characteristic in the United States. There is no Aristocracy.
You look at "only landed white men" could vote, and don't realize how drastically that diverged from the European cultural baseline.
These landed white men didn't even have recognized and venerated and chronicled names. That was a revolutionary disbursement of power at the time. Johnny sets up a homestead, he gets to vote. Lack of suffrage for everyone else wasn't even mainly an issue of "Everyone without it is inferior;". It was chosen for it's uncontroversial nature amongst the founders and their contemporaries. They were building a Nation, remember, and the seed of Unity had to start somewhere. It's an example of incremental value delivery.
They needed some edifice capable of doing the things Governments was expected to do, which means they needed to start building that kernel of "get things done" that people could buy into and go with. So that's what they did. Amongst themselves they built the most revolutionary, egalitarian government they could at the time. They also built in the measures whereby all the assumptions and policies they enacted to create unity at that time could be modified by popular consensus as times progressed. Just as a plant starts with a Seed, so too did the Nation in that group of upper class white men, who wasted no remarkably little time on the Nation State scale of time expanding suffrage. voluntarily, I might add.
As to Senators being appointed by State legislatures, that was due to fundamental changes in what the role of the Senate is. The Senate was not intended to be reflective of "the People" at all. It was meant to represent the interest of The State's themselves where "The State" here is defined as the respective government apparat put in place by the People of each State.
Each State determined how voting for State Senators was done, and to my knowledge, at the State level, it is still direct election by the voting population at large. So you had that level of people expressing their confidence in someone to take on the mantle of overseer of the fundamental architecture of government. However, when it came to the Federal level, it was delegated to the State apparatus to choose the ones among their number most well-versed and capable of not only representing their State's interests, but balancing them against the competing interests of other States.
Without mass media, this arrangement made sense. You wouldn't know a Senatorial candidate from the other side of the State from Adam, but other State Senators would.
If you look at the patterns the Founders favored, it was always balances. Everyone gets to weigh in on overall direction, but the nagging details get handled by a smaller more deeply versed group with longer tenures/more experience because the devil is in the details. Start with the widest workable suffrage everyone could agree on, landed men who could show up and weren't deemed impossible to accommodate by the culture of the time, and have faith that men's good nature would see that spread wide in short-order; with a hedge against men's worse vices through deemphasis and deglorification of public service.
It was a different world back then. Just as kids growing up today will seemingly never know a U.S. before 9/11 screwed everything up, so too was the Overton window different back then.
Human beings are as much victims of the constraints imposed by the physical, economic, and social environments of the Times they Live In. The accomplishment, and great Humanitarian Gift of the Founders, was the Founding of a Nation whereby with Unity would come prosperity, safety, good fortune and freedom for all if only men endeavored to keep it so, and drive it in that direction.
History is full of the stories of how things didn't go to plan, but it is also full of examples of a Great Nation giving rise to Great People to do Great things, even from humble origins.
The Electoral College arose out of the Founders dedication to bicamerality. They trusted the population with Candidate selection, but once again, the work of figuring out who amongst the candidates was best was reserved for a small group of directly elected Electors. To them, under assumption of good nature, was entrusted the final responsibility of Conscience and wisdom into which candidate was most trustworthy to hold office. A decision best confined to smaller groups, away from the crowds. If it's a good fit, the extra step of the Electors wouldn't make a lick of difference. If it was a bad fit, but they could work a crowd, the Electors should weed out the unfit candidate. Check the Federalist papers on that one.
That went sideways when national political parties came about, but that's life.
The lifetime SCOTUS appointment was a concession toward attempting to keep the judiciary independent from the political arena and at least constrain the politics to appointment time. Even then, most nominations are encouraged to be of a fundamentally balanced nature, with track records that also encompass going across the aisle, and not taking undue liberty with interpretation of the law. Again, not perfect, but it mostly worked. It got us to the point where you and I are having a reasonable discussion over whether or not there was foul play at the heart of architecting things such that one or another group is kept at a severe disadvantage; which in all my research I haven't found clear evidence of. The emphasis has always been maintaining a governmental edifice that works, and changes with the mores of the time.
There have been undeniable bad calls by the government in history to be sure, but those weren't "all according to plan". They were emergent reflections of society at the time, just as the chaos we're experiencing now almost assuredly is. I never in my life dreamed the American System and way-of-life could end up in the painful straits we're in, but neither did any of my forefathers when they had their civic faith tested.
I shed a tear everyday, because at a minimum, the change we're experiencing is the system working as intended. Assumptions long unquestioned getting their due attention. This is it. This is the Legacy of the Founders, the marvelous machine they built, for the good or ill of their descendants. The winds o
You can credibly say that it sure smells like an aristocracy nowadays, and I won't argue. Back then though? Absolutely not, and never with a clear premeditation to create an underclass, a characteristic of Greek civics they despised as I recall.
>You said: The Peerage and Nobility is intrinsically woven into the concept and definition of English social and civic life. There is no 1:1 mapping of that same characteristic in the United States. There is no Aristocracy.
>> I said this: I'm not sure how you quantify (facts/evidence) your statement that "That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic". As this would be considered historic revisionism. Aristocratic might not be the most precise word (elitism goes too extreme) but it gets close enough to the vein of truth to understand my point. Selected few men, rule over the masses, by design. [1]
I'm not sure why you went on multiple different tangents but my main point is above and hasn't been refuted. It's almost as if you don't understand the definition of aristocratic (addressed later).
>You said: You can credibly say that it sure smells like an aristocracy nowadays, and I won't argue. Back then though? Absolutely not.
No. It was aristocratic then. It wasn't British aristocratic then but it was aristocratic, nonetheless. Yes, it was by design or else there wouldn't be a Republic. I'm not deeply a scholar of the time period therefore I can't say whether it was malevolent or not.
> Wiki says: Aristocracy (Greek ἀριστοκρατία aristokratía, from ἄριστος aristos 'excellent', and κράτος, kratos 'rule') is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning 'rule of the best'. [2]
The founders didn't merit their land ownership nor the ability to read/write nor merit being white nor merit being male nor merit many other factors. It was circumstantial, largely through no agency of their own, which is privileged. They did use that privilege to attempt something new which was more Democratic than most forms of govts. Regardless, they were aristocrats. /end for me.
Noted. Good for you. If you're going to twist the meaning of aristocracy away from what it has historically been, that's all on you. Republics != Aristocracies. Just because some people have authority delegated to them, the essence of representative democracy, it does not make them Aristocrats. It makes the person nominated or elected a civil servant, a social position in the United States that actually renders you vulnerable a position to have to put up with more abuse than would normally be tolerated in everyday life. By the way you're defining it, even a nuclear family is an Aristocracy, an assertion most reasonable people would laugh at, and no number of Wikipedia links will change that.
Furthermore, you missed the nuance of the Greek way of life vs. the reality of the American System. Which is that anyone can run and hold office. You have to campaign well, but there is no privileged class you must be a member of. You need only be the bearer of the right ideas at the right time.
That now, it may be woefully out of reach for those who have to hold down a full time job, and is really only attainable once you've gotten yourself to the point you've got a decent social and support network, still doesn't make the American System an Aristocracy. Just a pain to get ahead in, and much more likely to be participated in by those who aspire to politics.
The other "tangents" were refutations of your assertion that various aspects of the architecture of the early American government were specifically attempts to create an aristocratic class. They most certainly were not and even a cursory reading of the Federalist papers demonstrates that while there were some Founders who were favorable toward the idea there were just as many against it. Following any of the historical literature of the time will demonstrate that while there was an appreciation for the well to do, there was just as much for those of more humble origin that found their own way into the political limelight.
You seem to have your mind made up, so that's cool. You do you. However, if you're looking to get taken seriously by anyone who doesn't already agree with you, you may want to consider getting a better appreciation for the historical context of the time in question, and open yourself to the fact that societies evolve over time. Your protests that the Founders were Aristocrats from your privileged position here and now would be laughed at as grim humor or insanity in their time. They were traitors. Treasonous currs and usurpers to the loyalust. They were heroes, patriots, and paragons to the oppressed, and liberty starved of the time. The Dream and ambitious ideal they chased, of a Country of the Free, of, by, and for the People it served at the consent of; bound explicitly from assuming a place as Supreme Arbiter or Granter of Freedoms through the Constitutional foundation laid out in simple language, and left open ended for revision by those that came after. To them, better men and women than any of them could ever hope to be, and underpinned
by their single greatest gesture against the established powers of the time: namely their Declaration that started it all.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
So if you're set in your ways, if you truly believe what they built is worthy of ridicule, scorn, and abandonment, know that you are walking in the very shoes they did all those years ago, and take care that you not repeat their mistakes, and that you put at least as much effort, forethought, and sacrifice into that which you're set on hewing from the corpulent mass of the society you seem to have come to despise.
On the other hand, if you're just looking to change things for the better, you're in good company; the trick is to beat the establishments it's own game.
Then can the capitol hill police throw congress in jail anytime they decide a law congress made was illegal? No. There is a system of checks and balances to address unconstitutional laws, and to correct laws that are bad but not illegal.
> because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement.
Then we do not live in a democracy with a rule of law. Why have the constitution at all?
Barring weasel lawyering and issues around standing. The very idea that you would claim these violations are not punishable means that they will continue to occur.
I am having a hard time fathoming how you take this stance at all.
> Then we do not live in a democracy with a rule of law. Why have the constitution at all?
The concept of checks and balances is an attempt to mitigate this problem. The "higher authority" is the other branches of government. But even that only goes so far.
Ultimately the entire scheme only works because individual humans agree to abide by the implicit social contract to live within the system of laws. To the extent that large number of people come to not feel bound by the social contract, well at some point you have some sort of haphazard and generally unjust system, insurrection, or even civil war.
I'm tempted to make some comments about recent events in the US, but suffice to say there are definitely some people who seem to think the current social contract isn't worth saving. And I'm not just talking about those taking action in the streets. There are plenty of people in elected positions of power who are behaving in that way also. It would be nice if those who feel like it isn't worth working within the system to improve things had any sort of an alternative. Unfortunately it is orders of magnitude easier to dismantle and destroy than it is to create and build. I hope we don't have to learn that lesson the hard way.
> If not, then those people might actually be correct.
This doesn't seem reasonable to me. The amount of misery and injustice that would accompany any sort of dissolution of civil society would be enormous and with no path towards something better.
To the extent that some people who think the current system is broken beyond repair make an effort to explain what they would do different it basically amounts to "everything will be better if we just give all the power to my preferred group of people", which sounds a lot like fascism to me.
The expanding scope/power of national government (all branches) is a huge part of our problem. Accelerating that trend but with the "right people" in place is not an attractive solution from my point of view. It doesn't matter to me if the "right people" have a (D) or (R) after their name, expansive national government is a bad idea.
It isn't the expansion but the loss of control. Large government is fine as long as it serves the people. Large government doesn't also have to mean millions of rules.
Civil society also doesn't have to be tied directly to government. America's biggest problems is that we are shedding norms faster than we acquiring them.
I had a conversation with a business ethics professor, and every one of her students for the most part want to work at Amazon and they have favorable opinions about Amazon's means and methods. Corn pone and all that. The lust for money has too large of an effect on our society.
There’s a reason the founding fathers regularly stated things like
> the Tree of Liberty Must Be Refreshed with the Blood of Patriots and Tyrants - Thomas Jefferson
It’s because the final authority is the people of the country. The constitution is the social contract the government and people agreed to. If broken, the people have the obligations to correct it. That’s not to say some kind of rebellion necessarily. We have the justice system, Congress, senate, etc. when all that fails... that’s why we have the first, second, fourth, etc amendments. It makes it hard to enforce your will all at once when the people have those protections. Each would have to be slowly taken away to effectively take control .
> because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement
Technically, that higher authority is the people themselves. Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
>Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
No they didn't, look up Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion as examples. The US government has never been successfully "held accountable" at gunpoint.
(The Oklahoma City bombing was the biggest terrorist attack next to 9/11 and yet never discussed in any history class I’ve taken, while the latter is discussed in virtually every class on any subject on its anniversary. Probably an interesting reflection of xenophobia (probably among other things) I think.)
>The Oklahoma City bombing was the biggest terrorist attack next to 9/11 and yet never discussed in any history class I’ve taken
No government sponsored curriculum is going to open the door to the very tough questions that the first two parts of that trilogy naturally raise. It's the same reason people are never taught about the Indian wars or Jim Crow south except that "they existed". If people learned about how many times the government straight up violated treaties it signed and how many times state governments intentionally used the forces at their disposal to disenfranchise blacks then people wouldn't trust the government. The career arcs of the kind of people who think these things should be learned don't tend to put them on the committees that set state curriculum.
In what way was the British Government "held accountable"? British leaders in Britain weren't held accountable, and many of the eventual founders were high level bureaucrats in the British government of the American colonies.
Perhaps, but I don't think that they were punished. The difference I'm getting at here is subtle, but it's the difference between declaring independence and replacing the existing government. Both happen through revolution of some form, but one breaks away from a government you dislike. THat's not punitive. One replaces it and usually punishes the old one.
Declaring independence from a distant seat of government is vastly different and vastly easier than trying to overthrow the local government.
I'm not talking about punishment or punative action. I'm talking about accountability, where being 'held accountable' could be a synonym for 'held responsible'. In this case, the way I used the phrase, Britain was 'held responsible' by simply being told to 'go away'.
But being "held responsible" and being "held accountable" are very different. Holding someone responsible means to blame them. Holding someone accountable means giving them consequences. Many people blame the government for all sorts of things. Only a very small number of those things is the government ever held accountable for.
I agree that many people blamed the British Government for their problems, indeed that was the impetus for the revolution, but accountability of the British government was limited to none.
Absolutely agreed that it is a very last resort. The declaration of independence actually does a good job of outlining just how much of a last resort the american revolution actually was.
>> because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement
> Technically, that higher authority is the people themselves. Bear in mind that the Constitution was written in a context where the governed people successfully held their government accountable at the business end of their hunting rifles.
I should have probably said "there's no higher institutional authority to appeal to for enforcement." When you're talking about jail-time penalties, I think you're talking about something that's institutionally enforced.
At this point, the only check is the people via elections; but I don't think unconstitutional laws are passed for some private purpose, but rather to satisfy some popular political demand (like "never again"). Such esoteric concepts like the unconstitutionality of some particular law aren't often at the top of voters minds, either.
At least in the current climate, with the level of disunity and polarization, any attempt at a revolution would be a civil war where (in the end) half the country loses a good chunk of their civil rights.
Seems like the courts could make a distinction between "ok this was unclear" and "this was obvious, egregious and deserving of penalties."
And while throwing Congress in jail seems unworkable, disqualifying members from reelection in egregious cases might be doable (though of course it would require a constitutional amendment).
The whole point of the bill of rights and many parts of the constitution is to protect ourselves from mob rule... just because 50.1% of the people think it is ok to remove the rights of 10% of the people doesn't mean they are allowed to do that. We have a lot of checks against the 'will of the majority'
This is essentially the qualified immunity debate. SCOTUS has decided that unless the government defendant did something that SCOTUS in the past has specifically ruled is unconstitutional, you don't get to win a ruling against them. Where specifically is defined exceptionally narrowly.
That's not actually whay SCOTUS did when it created qualified immunity (which it has the authority to do, but congress also has the authority to overturn that). What you described is how it has evolved in the circuit courts.
I agree that's not the original "plan" (or whatever you want to call it), but AFAIK SCOTUS has pretty much said the circuit courts are doing the right thing there.
> And while throwing Congress in jail seems unworkable, disqualifying members from reelection in egregious cases might be doable (though of course it would require a constitutional amendment).
I don't think so. Do you really want the executive and the courts be able to disqualify representatives, essentially for political reasons, because they proposed legislation or supported legislation that a president has signed into law?
> what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail?
My understanding is at the time it was written, it was expected that a government would be balanced by the potential military might of an armed rebellion should the government act so against the interests of the populace as to inspire that response (after all, starved and freezing American rebels had just beaten one of the mightiest empires in history, so they had set historical precedent).
I don't think the founders foresaw a future in which the government's military might so far surpassed the public's as to make such a rebellion unthinkable.
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
Well.. you could depose them. Or declare independence from them. That has happened a few times in history.
The Constitution is a social contract. The people say "we'll give you (government) these abc powers, if you promise to use them this xyz way." When that contract is broken, no one gets thrown in jail - its rather more severe. The legitimacy of the government is called into question, or dissolved.
In an ideal world, yes. In our actual world, the Constitution was ratified by a very small number of representatives from the population. And those representatives were drawn from and selected by white male landowners who owned some minimum threshold of land. IIRC that counted for less than 10% of the people living in the proto-US.
Huh? How are you reading that in my comment? I explicitly think that throwing Congress in jail would be silly, and actually unjust. But I didn't at all address that.
I was merely pointing out that the US's "government for the people by the people" was laughably not at all that back when it was founded. "The people" didn't give the government abc powers; a single-digit percentage of them did.
Beyond that, suggesting that an armed insurrection could ever be successful at deposing the US government... that's a silly fantasy.
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense.
The only nonsense is that we haven't done exactly that. If someone in power betrays the public trust they should be punished. The punishment ought to be severe so there is no doubt about the stakes at play.
> That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment.
We have members of our government who have taken oaths to other nations, and that have then voted to provide those other nations with aid and support. Similarly, we have members of our government who provide legal sanctuary for those who defy the laws of the land. And, regardless of your political beliefs, both parties currently in power have voted overwhelmingly in favor of war over the past several decades.
> Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
If a senator woke up tomorrow and wanted to help a martian terror cell that nobody knew existed, they would still be assisting an enemy of the state. It would still be treason, and I doubt that interpretation would be a topic of debate.
There are also groups who openly consider us their enemy and take action to harm the United States, even if we don't 'officially' recognize them. Some of these groups are nation-states, others are religious groups, and others and driven by [0]other ideologies.
A communist wouldn't accept that installing communism in the US is "waging war against the US", and legal precedence in the US is that its legal to be a communist, so I'm not sure what you meant by that.
In fact, even supporting the Soviet Union would not be treason. Enemies, in this context, is very narrowly defined as an entity the US has declared war against.
À senator helping a Martian terror state, as long as they did not engage in violence against the US, wouldn't be convicted of treason.
It's not about communists, it's about groups that engage in specific behaviors such as economic warfare.
> Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them - or - adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
> Enemies, in this context, is very narrowly defined as an entity the US has declared war against.
There has been so few cases that this interpretation isn't well-tested. Regardless, based on cases that do exist, this doesn't seem to be true.
There are exceptions to what you're saying such as John Brown who was executed for treason for attempting (failing) to incite a slave revolt. Also, cases such as Fries Rebellion exist where war was never declared as far as I am able to ascertain, but the leader was convicted of treason. And then there's the case of Mary Surratt who was connected to the Lincoln assassination and executed for treason.
I said that enemy was defined as someone that is at war with the US. John Brown attacked the US government, so it isn't treason under the section of aiding and abetting an enemy, but under war against the US. Same for the Fries Rebellion, same for Mary Surratt.
Economic warfare, whatever that means, against the US, is not illegal, and making it illegal is unconstitutional due to the strong protections for private property.
> [0] economic warfare may reflect economic policy followed as a part of open or covert operations, cyber operations, information operations during or preceding a war. Economic warfare aims to capture or otherwise to control the supply of critical economic resources so that the military and intelligence agencies can operate at full efficiency or deprive enemy forces of those resources so that they cannot function properly.
If you think people engaged in the above activities aren't engaged in a crime, then there's no point in carrying this discussion further.
> Economic warfare, whatever that means, against the US, is not illegal, and making it illegal is unconstitutional due to the strong protections for private property.
This is 100% incorrect, on every level. Taking intentional action to harm an economy is a direct threat on the security of a nation and would be an objectively justifiable Casus belli.
This point makes no sense. A properly passed amendment to the Constitution (presumably what is meant by update) can never be unconstitutional by definition. Furthermore, prohibiting ex-post-facto laws means you can't pass a law which criminalizes actions in the past. But courts don't pass laws, they interpret them. There's plenty of cases where courts interpret a law in a new way because of new situation. For example, I'm sure Clayton County is going to face applicable penalties under Title VII after Bostock v. Clayton County (recent LGBT discrimination ruling).
This is a common misconception. Courts don't pass statutes, but they certainly create law. Nearly every ruling from any sort of appeals court answers a question of law which is then binding on everyone under the jurisdiction of said court.
This is the essential difference between a common law and civil law system. There are still rulings in the US that cite old English cases from before 1776 as the basis of the law in this country.
> Nearly every ruling from any sort of appeals court answers a question of law which is then binding on everyone under the jurisdiction of said court.
While it's true that courts (in the US and similar systems) make law, this specific claim is an exaggeration, at least as regards the US. Full precedential weight generally only applies to published decisions, which are only about 1/3 of decisions of, for instance, the US Courts of Appeals.
Sure, but it's irrelevant in this case because the Constitution prevents Congress and the states from passing an ex post facto law, not the courts from applying a new precedent to past events. I was just trying to argue that applying court decisions to events in the past doesn't violate the prohibition against ex post facto laws.
Only in a country with jurisprudence. Not all countries hold that court decisions require following court decisions to respect previous decisions (ie, legal precedent).
> This point makes no sense. A properly passed amendment to the Constitution (presumably what is meant by update) can never be unconstitutional by definition.
That's not what I was talking about. Look at the example I used. The Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional to forbid gay marriage, even though that was the common practice up to that time. So, now we've discovered all the people who were engaged in implementing the common practice were violating the constitution? What happens to them now.
The courts don't examine theoretical questions of legality. Every law that was declared unconstitutional was a law that was passed and enforced, usually in good faith.
I don't think it would be unconstitutional ex-post-facto. Obergefell v. Hodges didn't define sex discrimination in marriage certificates unconstitutional after a certain date. It was always unconstitutional, and was recognized as such in their ruling.
And yes, I would like to see, actually, qualified immunity removed and governments held liable for rights violations. Perhaps not prison time for the clerks - who were simply "following orders", as horrendous a saying as that is - but some liability and remedy for the countless people harmed.
How different a world would it be if as a result of Brown v. Board of Education was that black families were financially compensated for sixty years of segregation and for centuries before that denied the right to an education?
How different a world would it be if as a result of Shelley v. Kraemer, every black person who was told they couldn't buy a home because of a bank was compensated?
How different a world would it be if as a result of Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt, women who sought an abortion and were denied or unable due to unconstitutional restrictions on clinics were compensated by the equivalent of child support from the state?
I think that would be a better world. No, I don't think the clerks, the school boards, or health commission members in Texas should go to jail. But I do think that perhaps, just perhaps, we might live in a more just world today if there were long-term consequences for denying someone their rights. And maybe, just maybe, we can then start to ask whether or not "just following orders" is a good way to justify one's individual place in society.
But before we go down the slippery slope of questioning whether evil can be banal - it can - we should ask whether or not its prior victims should be entitled to a remedy too.
> I don't think it would be unconstitutional ex-post-facto. Obergefell v. Hodges didn't define sex discrimination in marriage certificates unconstitutional after a certain date. It was always unconstitutional, and was recognized as such in their ruling.
Maybe not on some technicality, but the effect would be the same. Conduct that was reckoned to be legal (and in fact required by law) becomes retroactively illegal because of the new interpretation.
> How different a world would it be...
You'd have officials second guessing the law left and right, so it wouldn't be much of a law anymore. You can imagine situations where that might be good, but there are just as many (if not more) where that would be very bad.
You chose your examples, but there'd be others that may be less compelling to you: cities being forced to pay compensation because they tried to regulate gun ownership, retroactive holes in the budget because the individual mandate was declared unconstitutional. Those are just some thing I can think of off the top of my head. Is that how you want good faith efforts to solve problems treated?
I think this is a care where idealism and practicality are in a pretty severe conflict, and there have the be pretty strong limits on retroactivity.
I imagine that the rights you're talking about would never have been recognized in such a world.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but it was hard enough to get those rights recognized in the realm of argument, I imagine putting a giant pile of money on the other side would make it functionally impossible to change anything.
Putting financial penalties on admitting your mistakes doesn't usually make people more compassionate. If it did, the world of corporate law would be a utopia.
I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases.
If a police department, a county clerk, or a school repeatedly violates someone's rights, I don't think it's fair to say "Well, we 'fixed' the problem for anyone who comes after those folks." For one thing, due to qualified immunity with police brutality the problem never actually goes away. No one is every held responsible. For another, when cases actually can go all the way up to a court of appeals or the United States Supreme Court, the remedy is usually "don't do that".
There's a pernicious form of cruelty that many of the same people politically aligned with denying people rights also believe that equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, is the best way to organize society. Yet, when it's recognized that opportunities have been systemically denied and stolen from certain classes of people, those people offer no recompense.
We can and should change that. If we really, genuinely do believe in equality of opportunity then reparations for civil rights violations are necessary. We cannot have equality of opportunity when the playing field has been tilted by centuries of generational and institutional harms.
> I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases.
Yes, I get that. I'm not talking about individual liability, I'm talking about institutional budgets.
I'm saying that if acknowledging rights generally costs a large sum of money (in your hypothetical, in payments to people who have had their rights infringed upon) you will see less of it, as pressure gets put on legislators and judges to save money.
To take the recent example of gay marriage, I would expect the phrase "we can't let them marry, there's a budget crunch going on" to be used unironically.
I think that what you're advocating for would end up with less of what you seem to actually want (you seem to want people's rights to be respected).
We already have that system. Congress can pay any reparations it decides.
You want a system where any judge or jury can decide that someone owes someone else a billion dollars based on past law? Until 4 years later when a judge or jury rules the other way and makes them pay it back?
Yes, I believe Congress should pass a law repealing or narrowing the Supreme Court's creation of qualified immunity, and I believe that §1983 lawsuits and rights violations in general, or a variation thereof, should entitle the harmed individuals to reparations.
To keep such reparations from being held up in courts or tossed back and forth, I think that upon finding a violation of constitutional rights has occurred, the Supreme Court can and should appoint a special master or appoint parties to determine the appropriate remedy for historical abuses.
When one state violates another's rights, usually water rights, cases of so-called original jurisdiction for the Supreme Court, they appoint such an individual to study the matter to the extent the court needs, being themselves not experts. The states can argue over the findings and sometimes the reparations are revisited on an annual or recurring basis. The finding may sometimes be that one state owes another "a billion dollars" based on past law.
I see no reason why classes of people shouldn't be afforded the same here. There exist mechanisms to provide long-term, well-informed and adversarially argued remedies. We should not throw our hands up in the air and argue that it's "too hard" when we can adopt such systems already in place.
We're not talking about "someone" though; we're talking about city, county, state, or the federal government compensating victims when agents of the state violate their civil rights. No individual has to pay this directly.
Of course this money comes from somewhere: taxpayers. That seems appropriate, as the citizenry of the US should be held accountable for civil rights violations they allowed through poor choice in elected leaders. Yes, they might be several steps removed from the bad decision-making, but the buck has to stop somewhere.
This is an interesting concept. In Norway, the parliament cannot pass contradictory laws, for instance, for the simple reason this tenet: "All power must be gathered in this hall". So in essence, Stortinget (our parliament) cannot pass laws that give power away, for instance. Doing so would be unconstitutional, also because our constitution explicitly states that power shall not be given away. Yet it has happened, but in those instances the laws is either handily disregarded at opportune times, or it's left to the suppreme court to decide the outcome where there are offended parties. And since they follow the constitution, they always follow the above tenet.
> and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail?
Yes that's exactly what you should do. That's not nonsense. That's how a non-corrupt state should work. At the very least the law itself should be nullified.
Not so much any longer. The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling. We've been reducing the prison population for a decade now.
For example the black male imprisonment rate began declining finally during the second year of George W Bush's Presidency. It has dropped by around 36% since the year 2001.
The US incarceration rate began declining about the same time we began building more private prisons (for the record, I'm ideologically against private prisons), which entirely goes against the common propaganda that private prisons would result in a lot more people in prison. Turns out, of course, that it was evil government actions and policies that did all those very bad things, like the war on drugs and putting millions of people in prison unjustly and holding them there for excessive durations of time (mandatory minimum sentencing laws).
> The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling.
Technically true, but man oh man do we have a ways to go before the war on drugs is mitigated[1]. Based on the trend of the last ~10 years, we're due to reach 1980 levels of prison population in the 23rd century[2].
The overall incarceration rate wouldn't be misleading with this information, although the correlation they draw with privatization of prisons in some states very well could be. Is there a specific pair of states you would refer to here?
With the exception of the president, there is always an authority that can arrest/punish an authority (including the military).
Incorrect interpretation of the law is not what I am talking about, intentional violation is. The clerks that denied marriage licenses before the ruling did not violate the law and after the ruling yes, they did act on behalf of government (not that I am expressing my view on the matter). What happened was one clerk was jailed indefinitetly (human rights violation!) Until she complied instead of measured punishment and removal from office. Regarding the law makers, the law maker that introduced it should be punished if it can be proven he violated the bill of rights on purpose (intent).
You can't say the law is not clear enough to punish people. You're essentially saying the law is a guideline open to free interpretation. If I kill someone with a gun, is it murder? It depends right, even in such a simple scenario the law is not clear cut, that's why you have judges. A cop on duty can get away with a shooting if he feared for his life, in certain states you can proactively stand your ground and kill intruders. No matter what, judges interpret law and lack of clarity is fine.
The crime is violating constitutional law while acting on behalf of government. Intentional ignorance of the bill of rights or malicious violation of the same must be proven in court to find a person guilty.
It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no higher authority to appeal to for enforcement. If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense. The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and procedures that the the country and government have decided to follow voluntarily, not because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
> The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of the constitution.
That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment. Many violations of the Constitution or Bill of Rights aren't clear until some court case interprets some action as not being in compliance. Would you have every county clerk that ever denied a same-sex marriage license or defined procedures to do so go to jail after Obergefell v. Hodges?