Comment by kevin_thibedeau
2 days ago
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.
2 days ago
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
That page specifically says the constitution grants rights to the government and reserves the rights of the people. There is a lot in there about the case against the bill of rights, a big part of which is that itemizing the rights implies that they are limited to the list.
Editing to clarify that this isn't just semantics: under the 'grant rights to the people' model, a government that grants one set of rights is just as legitimate as one that grants another. It was the position of the founders that governments which deny certain rights are infringing on the pre-existing rights of the people. This is the basis for their position on revolution.
So that means there it offers zero protection against private corporations? It seems like that is a bad idea, isn't it better to say people have rights that nobody is allowed to violate instead? Like freedom of speech doesn't matter much if private corporations are allowed to silence you.
2 replies →
That is a list of restrictions on government power, not a grant.
Those are the same thing, with no difference existing between them in any context. You're complaining about the difference between a document that describes party A buying something from party B versus another one that describes party B selling the thing to party A.
Think about what it might mean for
(a) the government to give me the right to live in your house; or
(b) the government to restrict you from expelling me from your house.
1 reply →
Mr Madison, and a bunch of other Founding Fathers, might disagree a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights