I think a huge part of the problem is that it’s run on Gentlemen’s agreements but we pretend it’s not. The UK’s “Constitution” is a hodgepodge of laws and court cases and things that probably closer to treaties than anything else. It’s a mess, but they know it’s a mess so there’s a very real sense that the gentlemen’s agreements are important and as real as anything else.
In America, we worship our Constitution like a holy text, but so many of our institutional controls depend on Judicial Review (which is not technically mentioned in the constitution), on following along with the presumed intent, and on fudging around the edges when it’s obvious the machinery of the state would grind to a halt if we had to amend it every time a novel situation arose. Yet, nevertheless, we have an entire school of thought built around the idea of shallow surface readings. The “originalists,” not to put too fine a point on it, are fucking idiots.
If you get the idea that the only important thing is the blackletter text agreed to by a gaggle of 18th century provincials, many of whom were intelligent and well-intentioned, but all of whom were elites and either slave-owners or okay with hanging out with slave owners, then you have a recipe for considering stupid shit like presidential immunity or having a speaker of the house who’s not a Congressperson and who can become president despite already serving two full terms, because it doesn’t explicitly say you can’t. It’s childish and dangerous, and their ascendancy in the judicial branch is a travesty.
We learned that last time Trump was president that most of our country has been run on gentlemen’s agreements. It was news to a lot of us as well.
I think a huge part of the problem is that it’s run on Gentlemen’s agreements but we pretend it’s not. The UK’s “Constitution” is a hodgepodge of laws and court cases and things that probably closer to treaties than anything else. It’s a mess, but they know it’s a mess so there’s a very real sense that the gentlemen’s agreements are important and as real as anything else.
In America, we worship our Constitution like a holy text, but so many of our institutional controls depend on Judicial Review (which is not technically mentioned in the constitution), on following along with the presumed intent, and on fudging around the edges when it’s obvious the machinery of the state would grind to a halt if we had to amend it every time a novel situation arose. Yet, nevertheless, we have an entire school of thought built around the idea of shallow surface readings. The “originalists,” not to put too fine a point on it, are fucking idiots.
If you get the idea that the only important thing is the blackletter text agreed to by a gaggle of 18th century provincials, many of whom were intelligent and well-intentioned, but all of whom were elites and either slave-owners or okay with hanging out with slave owners, then you have a recipe for considering stupid shit like presidential immunity or having a speaker of the house who’s not a Congressperson and who can become president despite already serving two full terms, because it doesn’t explicitly say you can’t. It’s childish and dangerous, and their ascendancy in the judicial branch is a travesty.