I'm not so sure. Those are all things that most people consider to be bad, and that most countries have laws banning, or there's at least enough overlap between countries and languages to keep it mostly out of the mainstream internet content in certain languages.
These work because South Carolina doesn't have to "police the internet", instead things like FBI takedowns work, countries spend a lot of money on targeting trafficking organisations, and because companies like Twitter/Facebook/etc have some respect for national governments where they want to be able to conduct business.
What are SC going to do in this case? I guess they could prosecute sales of ads for these websites by companies based in SC, or maybe prosecute hosting providers in SC who are hosting these sites, but these are pretty weak actions.
Unless a large number of other governments get behind them, or they decide to build a Great Firewall of South Carolina this is going to have roughly zero effect.
And it's hardly trying to be North Korea. Hysterics don't help, and actually hurt any rational discussion.
Rather, as long as it doesn't run afoul of the intents and preferences of very conservative US judges.
That seems so completely absurd, almost like people are turning it into a holy book or fetishizing it.
Because it and following interpretation provides the boundaries for law in the US.
And comparing it to a fetish, or labeling it a 200 year old document, when is has been changed since then (last amended in 1992, still has multiple amendments pending, and can be changed again) is also absurd.
The amendment prior to that was from 1971, over fifty years ago. We're rapidly approaching the point where we can say the constitution hasn't been updated with new ideas in generations.
The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution. We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally, that makes it harder to change.
No, it isn't. I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights is still a pretty good set of basic rights. Would you be willing to roll the dice on throwing a random out to get a new one? That is what can easily happen when you make changing it easy enough to be done quickly.
Also, why would you want to change the root of all laws at any crazy rate? There is a reason Congress makes new laws, and states make new laws, every single year. You should not need to make drastic changes to the base legal framework just because someone invented an internet - you should be able to apply current legal frameworks, and if that is not enough, make small changes to address such changes. Even small legal changes at the Federal and local levels have significant cost to make needed changes throughout society. Now allow tinkerers to make constitutional changes willy nilly, and guess what the cost will be.
Or do you think it would be better for short-lived political trends to simply rewrite major sections of the Constitution every few years? That seems like an absolutely terrible way to plan a stable society.
>We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally,
Conversely, maybe the overall framework is pretty good, despite each subgroup not getting their way, so it doesn't need changed to add amendments for every tiny whim.
If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s, I don't know that we're going to agree on much.
On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph, but the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level.
On a technological level, what we have today is unthinkable to someone in the seventies. The internet, cell phones, personal computers, autonomous vehicles and drones, machine learning, predictive policing... All these things have major impacts on our way of life.
The world has changed too. Militarily, economically, socially, religiously, politically, etc.
Yet all of those were given protection based on Constitutional arguments, right? With no change needed to specifically add a new tiny rule to the Constitution for each single change in societal beliefs, right?
>If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s
People still work, buy houses, live by most of the same desires, needs, goals, interactions. Contract law is still useful. The Bill of Rights is still pretty useful.
In fact, I'd expect the vast majority of concepts in US law from the 1970s are still useful today. I think you overestimate the need to legislate every change in technology more than any country does.
>the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level
I seriously doubt that. Not a single issue you raised was not an issue in the 70s with a significant amount of people working on those issues. And fundamentally changed would mean things considered part of humanity in the 1970s are now gone, which I don't think is true at all. At best we've added some features and beliefs we now think are better. But we still care about people, about life, about dreams, about relationships, about dreams, about love, and death, and right to pursue happiness, and on and on.
If your system of laws is so weak as to been updating at a Constitutional level because someone invented a drone, then that system is fundamentally flawed, because it will break and never be able to be applied to life in any reasonable way. A good system has at a Constitutional level high level concepts that provide guidelines and boundaries that are refined by local, easier to change, and less system-breaking laws. That is the one we have.
Having stable long term laws is a pre-requisite for any modern economy to function.
And people do fetishize the 200 year old document. (At least, the parts they like.) You see it all the time, and saying otherwise is also form of fetish or worship.
Because it’s worked. The alternative, opening up the entire system of government for debate, simultaneously, continuously, predictably tears itself apart in a generation. (That or you wind up with an unwritten Constitution only the elites can decipher.) The Constitution isn’t sacred. But it’s far from worthless as a basis of our society.
The Constitution was amended 12 times in the 1900s, the last being 1992. There are still multiple pending amendments.
And, as a Union of States, each also with constitutions and amendments, how do you treat the overall legal entity? Most developed nations are about the size of a US state - and some are slowly banding into larger groups like the EU.
So how is this anomalous? Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates? Are any of the structure like the US as a union of semi-autonomous states?
> Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates?
Yes. https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/chronology/#
Picking only a high level misses that there are higher levels (such as world treaties and laws we are entered into) and ignores that the US is a conglomeration. When you'd pick Germany, but ignore EU rules, it's somewhat like picking Texas, and ignoring US.
It seems you're not really comparing frameworks very well.
The century that saw America exit WWII and the Cold War victorious while navigating a civil rights revolution? All amidst a series of peaceful transitions of powers, including the removal of a corrupt executive?
One can say many things. At the end of the day, the track record stands for itself.
This is separate from the question of whether the Constitution worked. It did. It produced a stable, powerful society. That some people are dissatisfied doesn’t refute that track record. It just points out there are dimensions on which it failed some.
That those people who are dissatisfied with that track record are now in control of the judicial branch of the US government doesn't refute that track record, I agree, but it does suggest that we are probably on a different track now, no?
Possibly. Let’s see what happens. The limited claim was that the Constitution worked over the past century. Saying some people are unhappy about the particular way it worked doesn’t detract from the fact itself.
Other countries have been very successful with other forms on basic documents. The American success may have been more successful with a document written to reflect a society without slaves, where you can travel across multiple state borders within a day, etc.
I mean, it’s a fine document and all, but can we please stop asserting without strong evidence that it’s the best ever or that it is the driving force of American success? That’s what I mean by fetishizing.
Straw man. None of this was asserted. All that was claimed is that it worked for the last century.