Reply #77: we could talk parliamentary supremacy / written constitutions all day [View All]

[iverglas]

and in fact I'd be happy to. I find the subject one of the most fascinating on earth. No shit at all; I'm really like that. I'm more interested in exploring its nooks and crannies than in saying mine is better than yours, of course, but there ya go. Pick a forum, and I'd be happy to continue ... some day when I'm not planning to take an actual day off, and then an actual long weekend, to rest up for the onslaught of work when the civil servants come back to roost, and Parliament resumes ...

Just one point on it for now:

As for evidence that "parchment" cannot have any authority. I will kindly refer that question to Al Gore. A sitting member of the executive branch gave up his power and gave it to his opponent because the Supreme Court said it was the Constitutional thing to do. Whether the court was right is a different question but that act alone shows the power behind certain "parchments."

You might note that the point you are really making is that recognition of the authority of the parchment was the operative factor, not the parchment. This was pretty much the point I was making. Without recognition, it is kindling. And without the essential goodwill and good faith from which that recognition springs, all the parchments in the world and learnèd jurists to interpret them are not going to produce a rights-respecting society, or keep one going. And conversely, with the goodwill and good faith, the parchments are really just ornamental, because all they really are to start with is an expression of that goodwill and good faith.

Because goodwill and good faith are sometimes in short supply, it is thought wise to get what they have produced down on paper. But that simply does not mean that the same results cannot be achieved without doing so.

Finally, I did not look far into what the decision actually dealt with.

And that was really my only initial point.