Declining World Influence of US Constitution

[ONW]

Considering that the British Parliamentary system with the very powerful, unelected upper house (House of Lords, which members are appointed to for life by the Church or by the Monarch) tremendously favors the conservatives in that country ... so no, I really disagree with you. Having the upper house of Parliament be seperated from the democratic election process makes the British Parliament one of the most resistant to progressives of any democracy.

The French Parliament, with a largely ineffective upper house (the French senate is basically inferior to the lower house) is much more what you had in mind, I would think.

+1

 

[TuffaloDeac10]

I suppose you would prefer a setup similar to the British model. The party that wins gets to do things its way for a certain period. No separation of powers, and no constitution to limit the officeholders.

Progressives would love that setup.

No not British. Ideally unicameral and with proportional representation instead of first past the post single member districts. Or mixed member proportional rep

 

[RChildress107]

Back in the early 80's when the Equal Rights Amendment was sent to the states to ratify, some members of the Court (Justice Powell) wanted to hold off on deciding sex-discrimination issues until the people had chosen to adopt or not to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment. His idea was that he didn't want to preempt the constitutional amendment process by deciding a case that would possibly come out differently under that amendment. However, because all freaking states have to ratify the thing, the time period for adoption of the amendment expired and this fell by the wayside. Long story short, the Supreme Court goes on to keep broadening our 14th amendment jurisprudence to, in effect, reach the same ground we would have reached by officially adopting the Equal Rights Amendment.

The only problem is we haven't reached the same ground when it comes to legal recognition of gender equality. Gender is still not a suspect class entitled to strict scrutiny (as it certainly would have been if the Amendment was ratified).

The Court almost established strict scrutiny for gender-classification in Frontiero v. Richardson in 1973 but could only get 4 votes because some justices wanted to wait on the Amendment (which passed both houses and was sent to the states in 1972).

By the time Craig v. Boren came to the Court in 1976, William Douglas (one of the 4 votes in Frontiero) had retired and those on the court seeking strict scrutiny had to compromise.

 

[WakeForestRanger]

My political science professor at Wake said that our Constituiton was not a good model for third world countries because it put too much power in the executive branch. He claimed it made it too easy for a dictator to seize power (mainly through the commander-in-chief aspect). That was one reason why parliamentary systems were preferred.