AmericanRhetoric.com
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7:22 · 1M views · Feb 19, 2016
Justice Antonin Scalia's opening statement at a 2011 Senate Judiciary hearing on the role of judges. He argues that the Constitution's separation of powers is what protects liberty, and that gridlock is by design.
Recommended often as a clear explanation of why the US system is built to be slow and why gridlock protects minorities.
17 comments from Hacker News
It depends on where you draw the line for acting in good faith. Justice Antonin Scalia's opening statement before a 2011 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is worth watching. this video Even more worth reading are the Federalist Papers, cover-to-cover, as he suggested. The depth to which the Framers considered the kind of situations we are in today is amazing.
I highly recommend watching this video [1] to understand why "progress has stalled". Believe it or not, it's by design. 1. this video
Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and then restrict the republic through a constitution. If Democrats were losing out to big numbers, they would pro-republic and Republicans would be pro-democracy. But, one of the best explanations for why founding fathers built the system the way they did is this[1], by late Justice Scalia. The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) - House represents the population - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). - The fundamental idea is that any bill must be agreed upon by: a. The will of the people not just in short term (house), but in mid-term (presidency) and long term (senate) also. When UK wanted out of EU, the remainers believed that they should have a revote because they didn't believe that people voted with full information. Of course, years later a second proxy vote through general elections made the intent clear, but in the US we will not go for a bill to be passed unless its not just what we voted for
I'd love to discuss with others here something related. I have lately (to my surprise) been drawn by some talks of Antonin Scalia on Youtube. Far from being repelled (or amused at his standing alone) as I was years ago by his coming down on the opposite side of judgements I thought were socially just and good, I now come to understand better what he was doing. At least if you believe his talks. After listening to his talks (and then thinking back to his opinions), I understand he was trying to make sure that the Constitution was followed to the letter of the law, and that if the people were unhappy with it, let them change it so that it reflected the popular desires. But let it follow that process. Not have social or political will creep its way in via individual judges' or courts' determination something was now "acceptable enough" that it could be ruled to have evolved and be constitutional at the present time. And that the writers of the Constitution were trying to prevent disaster as much as trying to enable progress -- and that we should be careful when we stray from the words encoding that goal, because when you do that it opens up all sorts of unintended consequences. (Hence the connection to this OP's story + comments about law as source code.) This really opened my eyes about what that aspect of judicial conservatism is about. Not that I agree with all of its philosophy or tendency (in politics) to court a certain sector of the vote, for example. But it did arouse in
A constitutionally limited government can explicitly hurt minority rights, for instance the Confederate States Constitution, or betray intentions of principles through direct democratic procedures by interpretation and enforcement. With direct democracy you do have tyranny of the majority while this is certainly mitigated in a representative democracy; for instance the 2016 election where the popular vote would have selected a different president. The US founding fathers were very familiar with Aristotle who stated: "Unlimited democracy is, just like oligarchy, a tyranny spread over a large number of people.” Indeed the US founding fathers' decisions reflect this, If we're to believe their commentary, they picked a republic with the motivation of liberty for all with emphasis on the elective structure, Constitutional Convention of Hamilton 1787 : "We are now forming a republican government...Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.” Scalia has a good talk about this, how a merely constitutionally limited government is completely ineffective of guaranteeing its provisions, its interpretation, and its enforcements: this video "Every banana republic has a bill of rights"