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Notes -
What I mean isn’t really that “what the first amendment allows” becomes the definition of free speech.
It’s that turning politics into law distorts politics and degrades law. On the one hand nominal proponents of free speech (as an example) forget why they care about it and how to argue for it because they get used to just saying “First Amendment rights, bitch”. On the other hand, it means that actual meaningful discussion of what these rights ought to be get distorted into legal wrangling about how to interpret legal documents; these being matters of high impact, this means increasing politicisation of legal appointments and blatant distortion of the law on both sides (abortion rights, gun control etc. on the left and now birthright citizenship etc. on the right). As an outsider, it doesn’t look healthy.
Britain has historically operated on a ‘whatever parliament says, goes’ basis, softened but not constrainted by historical convention. We moved to a more rights-based system in the last few decades due to importing European human rights law, and it’s having exactly the kind of distortion art effect I describe above.
That's a very good point. We try to make 66% or whatever the de jure floor for "overturn this rule", but if the median voter is tempted enough or unprincipled enough then 51% remains de facto sufficient for "wilfully misinterpret this rule and get away with it".
Right, exactly. Which in turn breeds disrespect for load-bearing parts of society.
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