Comment by bko
2 days ago
That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote.
Even relying on people to vote no is not enough.
2 days ago
That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote.
Even relying on people to vote no is not enough.
Some European countries like Germany do, but the EU somehow can override those national constitutions.
No, it can't. It's going to be an interesting legal challenge.
Also, the European Court of Justice has, to the best of my knowledge, not ruled on this yet, either. The fact fight isn't over.
It cannot. EU laws are completely useless and must be implemented by every government as a local law, which won't be more powerful than the constitution.
The problem is that constitutional courts should then say the law was against the constitution and cancel it, but will that happen?
In theory, it can't. But in reality, it does in important cases.
Germany has implemented EU sanctions against a German journalist, which deprive him and his family of the ability to conduct basically any economic activity in Germany or even to leave the country. He is not allowed to work. No one is allowed to pay him money. He has to petition the government every time he wants to access even a small amount of the money in his own bank account. The same restrictions apply to his close family members, because they are suspected of helping him survive financially. He is barred from crossing any border in Europe, including to leave.
He has not been accused or convicted of anything in court. The only procedure that was required to hand down an economic death sentence was for the EU Commission to put his name on a list.
The German government claims this is all okay, because the journalist can proactively challenge his sanction listing in Brussels. It's a years-long process that will require paying lawyers - using money he is not allowed to access.
Needless to say, this is all highly unconstitutional. But the German government simply doesn't care. They just say they're implementing EU sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru
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> EU laws are completely useless and must be implemented by every government as a local law
This isn’t true. Regulations are directly applicable and don’t require national legislation; directives generally do. Individuals affected by a failure to implement a directive can complain to the European Commission, which can bring infringement proceedings against the member state and potentially seek financial penalties.
EU law also has primacy over conflicting national law, and the CJEU’s position is that this includes constitutional provisions. Courts in Germany and Poland have challenged that position, but refusing to comply can put the countries in breach of their EU treaty obligations and lead to infringement proceedings and penalties.
The Danish government is pro spying on its people.
Currently we have numberplate recognition everywhere and logging of SMS and position info of phones.
So this is just another step into the direction where we will be watched everywhere by our government in case we step out of line.
3 replies →
We already have a constitution like that in Italy, not that anyone cares to enforce it though…
The sheer optimism of posting this as an American right now...
our rights have largely held up even in the absurd world we live in, and the constitution continues to be a thorn on the side of those trying to abridge them. what we are seeing now is the conclusion of decades of eroding our rights and the tower still refuses to topple. though of course we're going to have a lot of work to do fixing it up after all is said and done.
Have you heard of the Patriot Act?
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Have you seen Wickard v. Filburn?
I'm not sure any country actually has a Constitution with rights that are not up for a vote. There is generally a separate, harder procedure for changing the "basic law" or Constitution of a country -- for example, 2/3 of delegates or a 2/3 of states or something of that nature -- but I'd be surprised if there's a country where they have literally no way to change it at all.
The US constitution doesn't grant rights. It's sort of the whole deal which the rest of the western world doesn't really understand, much less Americans themselves.
Everything in the US Constitution is amendable, though -- in other words, the whole Constitution can be changed with a vote.
The US is founded on certain ideas about natural rights -- hence not granted, per se -- but that's somewhat orthogonal to this whole issue. Even if there were an unwritten constitution, a country could base its institutions, philosophy of lawmaking, jurisprudence, &c, on natural rights doctrine (and for a time, the British did exactly that).
The earlier post mentions "That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote." but if what they mean is natural rights, that goes well beyond any procedural issue around the basic law.
The US constitution is one of the few constitutions that _does_ grant rights[0].
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
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Mr Madison, and a bunch of other Founding Fathers, might disagree a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
Germany is one prominent example for obvious historical reasons.
But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_clause are not all that uncommon in general.
The page you link contains many interesting examples; but many of them are simply cases of making the vote harder -- requiring unanimous consent to change English-French bilingualism in Canada, for example -- rather than cases where the law simply can not ever be changed by a vote.
With regards to Germany, the page says:
...if a constitution provides for a mechanism of its own abolition or replacement, like the German Basic Law does in Article 146, this by necessity provides a "back door" for getting rid of the "eternity clause", too.
It's really hard to have a legal system that literally can not be changed by any legitimate vote -- only by revolution -- because what sits at the bottom of most of them (all of them?) is that the consent of some body politic is necessary and sufficient to legitimate a law.
Amending the US Constitution takes a lot of voting, with very large majorities in Congress / Senate and state legislatures. This has been achieved a number of times, and some of these decisions were rather unwise, like the Prohibition (18th amendment).
Yes, there is a separate, harder procedure for changing the Constitution of the United States -- but that procedure is also a vote.
The bill of rights section of the Namibian constitution may not be amended