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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30114 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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I wonder why the UK even bothers with a bicameral legislature if one of the halves is expected to just rubber stamp everything the other does. Seems silly to me, but I guess it's not my country so it doesn't much matter what I think.

Inertia and tradition like many things.

Canada has a similar setup, where the Senate very rarely tosses a bill out. As part of my job, I have read tons of transcripts of debates over various bills, especially subcommittee ones where they get down to the nitty-gritty.

The Senate debates have WAY less political grandstanding and partisan antics. They seem far better at articulating what they are trying to accomplish and whether that lines up with the proposed law. They'll often send the bill back with modifications, and even without those the discussions on what they are trying to do are useful for interpreting the law in the trenches.

Whether this service is worth the costs and downsides of the Senate, I'm not sure, and I have no idea if the UK works similarly. But I've definitely gotten some use out of them.

Each province has eliminated its upper house though, and the Conservatives did try to kill it by not appointing any Senators. They'd probably have gotten rid of it had they been able, but it would require an unlikely constitutional amendment.

For the same reasons the US still has a Congress (since in practice it’s the bureaucrats who make the laws there).

We'll see how that goes now with Chevron deference no longer being the law of the land.

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