Hacker News Reader

Comment by gargan | Hacker News Reader

Biggest mistake the Americans did was codify their constitution. I'll probably be pilloried for that but look at the evidence:

- US is about to have military on the streets during peacetime with no terror threat within a codified constitution

- UK has had military on the streets in response to terrorism in Northern Ireland (a real threat) and not for decades. The UK constitution is uncodified and spread over many (10+?) documents ranging from Magna Carta in the 1200s to the Bill of Rights in the 1600s to documents written in the 1800s and then more modern Acts of Parliament.

Importantly the UK constitution can slowly change which means the UK has never had a revolution and never will do. Whereas the US constitution is rigid which achieves the opposite: when it does change it'll be dramatic and as a result of another violent revolution.

View on HN

Why do you think that the UK having an unwritten constitution means that revolution cannot happen? Of course putting aside the fact we did have a revolution in the 1600s, and the almost constant revolution happening in Ireland until the 1930s. A fluid constitution is no use when the government is intransigent, and very little can protect a democracy from half the voters voting for a coup.

A written constitution only really protects (or affects at all) the things it very specifically enumerates. And when I look at the judicial tools we have that do bind the government (the ECHR for instance) they seem on the whole to make a good difference. A UK constitution that enshrined certain rights (healthcare, free speech, and so on) would make me feel a lot more secure about what future governments could do. It might also provide a better example than the American constitution in the respects it is lacking.

The revolution in the 1600s was reversed - as far as I know the UK is the only country in the world to have reversed a revolution.

If you want more healthcare security you're more likely to get that in an uncodified system like the UK. Yes your healthcare rights can be reversed but better that, than never happening at all like in the US.

A codified system also hands vast power to lawyers. The US is a lawyer's paradise of everyone suing everyone, rising political violence due to inflexibility, and more risk of revolution.

> Yes your healthcare rights can be reversed but better that, than never happening at all like in the US.

Do you really think that the thing standing in the way of universal healthcare in the US is its codified constitution? When I look at the constitutional cases that result in lawsuits in the US, they are almost universally cases that move the dial in favour of people's freedoms. Liberally interpreted, the US has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century in many respects. The undermining of civil liberties we see in the US right now are in spite of the constitution, not because of it (and you can tell, because everyone opposing it is appealing to the constitution, and everyone supporting the coup is ignoring it).

only country to reverse a revolution? uhh, that's almost like a required stage of every revolution, haha. it's almost more remarkable when a revolution sticks.

While the US consitition is not agile a like a git log of a popular js project it does have over 10k declined PRs, I think the record is 100 years waiting for review. It does change, it has to change.

If it were a public repo it would have been forked a long time ago.

It was, repeatedly. It's a very important historical document that defined negative rights (congress shall pass no law) and inspired most modern constitutions.

The problem is the US never bothered to address it's technical debt, so it's patch on patch on patch. An updated constitution would probably cut through a lot of the bullshit in American politics, e.g. the interstate commerce clause being the entire justification for the federal government lol.

You can amend the constitution. Its been done many times

Political systems do not exist in a vacuum, but integrate into a specific ethnic, cultural and geographic landscape. In a nation of immigrants with frequent demographic changes, having a written constitution anchors the country and prevents some capture of the government.

The UK and US are both equally nations of immigrants in 2025 at about 16% of the population being born abroad. The UK constitution is written but uncodified and unites the country under the King. The constitution can slowly change to deal with immigration, but in the US they're stuck with either what you have or violent revolution...

I was referring to when the political systems were set in place. When the UK became a parliamentary monarchy, no one could dream of becoming "a nation of immigrants," while in the case of the US, it was obvious that it was and would be for the next century, at least.

The US political regime was designed for stability by lawyers, which has worked quite well for the country so far. In the case of the UK, the lack of a constitution can also be quite dangerous as it allows abuse and doesn't guarantee any protection of basic rights or even democracy. This can work well if the country is mono-ethnic, with elites and plebeians sharing a common culture. It can also easily derail in pluri-cultural settings where ethnicities compete against each other to impose their standards or acquire resources from the state. This is what happens in Africa, for instance, and one of the reasons for the weakness of the state there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com