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Comment by deugtniet | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting how Japan and Germany both have a constitution that was essentially written by Americans after the second world war. But there is a big difference in civil liberties between these countries.

E.G. If the police charge you in Japan, there is very little chance not being sentenced to something (or taken hostage). Compared to Germany where you would have a much fairer trial.

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Aside, not relevant to the article discussed here.

   constitution that was essentially 
   written by Americans

I cannot speak about Japan, but that's historically false for Germany. If you look at the list of participants in the main events that drafted the West German constitution such as the Rittersturz-Konferenz [1] and the Verfassungskonvent auf Herrenchiemsee [2], then you'll see that all participants are German. Naturally, the allies had to agree, but they were split in a big way. The Soviet Union anyway, but the US and France really had very different ideas. France, in particular, wanted to snatch the Saar region. Naturally the drafters of the German constitution were inspired in particular by the US constitution, because it was rather successful.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rittersturz-Konferenz

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfassungskonvent_auf_Herrenc...

Specifically, the German Constitution was drafted by parties associated with the Weimar coalition, and very much reflects the lessons learned from the fall of the Weimar Republic.

Yes, that's also what I though. The new German constitution was heavily based on the Weimar constitution, but the parts that made Weimar unstable were replaced so those failure modes no longer apply, e.g. Weimar's destruktives Misstrauensvotum was replaced by konstruktives Misstrauensvotum, cf [1, 2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence#German...

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misstrauensvotum

According to Leonard Peikoff, the laws of the Weimar Republic which touched on Human Rights all had an "out" for the government to suspend rights in case of a national emergency or "for the common good." Is this accurate and is this still the case today?

Emergency powers were indeed reduced.

But more importantly, the post-war constitution was not allowed to be amended in ways that would contradict its "liberal democratic basic order" (banning a rerun of the Enabling Act).

Emergency Acts (Notstandsgesetze) were passed in 1968.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Emergency_Acts

Which are much more limited than Weimar emergency powers. Only specific freedoms can be limited (certain types of privacy, movement, and career), limited legislative powers devolve onto a proportionally-assembled subset of the full legislature rather than to the executive, and the federation can only take control of state forces in emergencies that cross state borders.

Plus a specific exception that says a state of emergency can't be called against labor disputes.

Yes, and that fits perfectly with: Grundgesetz = Weimar-debugged.

Yup!

It's been really interesting listening to German radio this last year, as we're passing 100th anniversaries of assorted formative events of the Weimar era. The idea of the Bundesrepublik being the successor of the republican Reich isn't just a legal concept, it's a very deeply held view (at least among the political and journalistic classes).

My constitutional knowledge on the German constitution is a bit rusty, but I guess you hit the nail on the head when you say: 'Naturally, the allies had to agree'. The Allies were the ones that required these conferences and approved of the Germans that went there. I guess the English and the French had some say, but really the big dog of the allies was the US. So I stand by my statement.

No, they did not; the conferences were attended by the governments of the German states, who had passed through the de-Nazification filter but were otherwise selected by purely German political processes.

When it came to the content of the constitution, the Allies' conditions were clear and pretty general - it had to be democratic, and it had to be federal. (The latter was distinguished from the Weimar constitution only in that the Allies insisted on general size parity between states.) Plus complying with occupation policy on control of heavy industry. See https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurter_Dokumente

The main principles of the constitution itself were assembled by German elected governments of the states (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfassungskonvent_auf_Herrenc...), and were very much direct responses to the process of the Nazi takeover in 1933.

I'd be interested to learn which part of the german constitution was "essentially written by the americans". Can you give an example? Just one?

Please don't forget that (1) the allies had really diametrically opposed goals -- France had to be coerced by the UK and the US to agree to the draft constiution. Moreover, (2) the allies tried hard to avoid the impression that they were forcing anything on the german drafters. Only the date for the drafting conference was an allied constraint: 1. September 1948. The allies wanted to West-German population to accept the constitution, remember the cold was was hotting up at the time, and Soviet union was good at exploiting discontent.

   approved of the Germans 
   that went there

Is that even true? Was there an official approval process? Have you got a reference for this claim?

Or the US where only the wealthy can afford a defense.

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