{"id":129749,"date":"2012-02-12T17:24:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T22:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=129749"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:07:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:07:33","slug":"the-us-constitution-is-losing-its-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/02\/12\/the-us-constitution-is-losing-its-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Constitution Is Losing Its Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> ‘We The People’ Loses Its Appeal With People Around The World<\/a> by Adam Liptak in the New York Times.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> The Constitution has seen better days.<\/p>\n

Sure, it is the nation\u2019s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.<\/p>\n

In 1987, on the Constitution\u2019s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that \u201cof the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.\u201d<\/p>\n

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. \u201cThe U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,\u201d according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the world\u2019s democracies,\u201d Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, \u201cconstitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world\u2019s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution\u2019s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Professor Law identified a central reason for the trend: the availability of newer, sexier and more powerful operating systems in the constitutional marketplace. \u201cNobody wants to copy Windows 3.1,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court seemed to agree. \u201cI would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,\u201d she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.<\/p>\n

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards, and they are frozen in amber. As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in \u201cOur Undemocratic Constitution,\u201d \u201cthe U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.\u201d (Yugoslavia used to hold that title, but Yugoslavia did not work out.)<\/p>\n

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years. By odd coincidence, Thomas Jefferson, in a 1789 letter to James Madison, once said that every constitution \u201cnaturally expires at the end of 19 years\u201d because \u201cthe earth belongs always to the living generation.\u201d These days, the overlap between the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and those most popular around the world is spotty.<\/p>\n

Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.<\/p>\n

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world\u2019s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)<\/p>\n

The Constitution\u2019s waning global stature is consistent with the diminished influence of the Supreme Court, which \u201cis losing the central role it once had among courts in modern democracies,\u201d Aharon Barak, then the president of the Supreme Court of Israel, wrote in The Harvard Law Review in 2002.<\/p>\n

Many foreign judges say they have become less likely to cite decisions of the United States Supreme Court, in part because of what they consider its parochialism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,\u201d Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Mr. Barak, for his part, identified a new constitutional superpower: \u201cCanadian law,\u201d he wrote, \u201cserves as a source of inspiration for many countries around the world.\u201d The new study also suggests that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted in 1982, may now be more influential than its American counterpart.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It guarantees equal rights for women and disabled people, allows affirmative action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights. On the other hand, it balances those rights against \u201csuch reasonable limits\u201d as \u201ccan be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are, of course, limits to empirical research based on coding and counting, and there is more to a constitution than its words, as Justice Antonin Scalia told the Senate Judiciary Committee in October. \u201cEvery banana republic in the world has a bill of rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cWe guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d Justice Scalia continued, \u201cit\u2019s just words on paper, what our framers would have called a \u2018parchment guarantee.\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: ‘We The People’ Loses Its Appeal With People Around The World by Adam Liptak in the New York Times. The Text: The Constitution has seen better days. Sure, it is the nation\u2019s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe US Constitution Is Losing Its Appeal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Well, if Ruth Bader Ginsberg doesn't think the US Constitution is the best model, then clearly it isn't.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/02\/12\/the-us-constitution-is-losing-its-appeal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The US Constitution Is Losing Its Appeal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well, if Ruth Bader Ginsberg doesn't think the US Constitution is the best 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