Why are so many constitutional amendments so vague? 4th Amendment

>>2599422
society is constantly changing, rather than a set of laws the constitution is a set a principles that should be timeless and applicable to any number of situations.

>>2599422

Because it's a constitution, not a statute book. And especially in a common law system, they're vague on purpose, to give the judiciary the sort of power and flexibility by defining what those vague terms mean as needed.

>>2599435
The problem is they are so vague that they effectively allow the judiciary the power to completely ignore the spirit of the amendments. For example, collecting everyone's private emails in a giant database is OK because the airwaves are public territory. And since both parties participate in this erosion of liberties, almost the entire Bill of Rights gets trampled. It'

Because the founding fathers were kind of dumb.

>>2599422
America follows British Common Law, so the Constitution does not have to be precise.

The implementation of what is considered 'unreasonable' or 'cruel' is left to jurisdictional precedent.

>>2599483
PS. The perennial arguments about the Constitution are stoked by foreigners who fundamentally don't understand how Common Law works.

>>2599475

Anon, I don't mean this to be snide, but you should really look at the whole course of American history before saying stupid shit like that. For instance, The Bill of Rights, up until the 1920s, was not considered to have anything to do with the state level governance, and you can see that in cases like U.S. vs Cruikshank

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/92/542/case.html

>The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendments means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government.

Do you remember D.C. vs Heller? Or McDonald v. Chicago? In both cases, barring a judicially conceived and unilaterally executed expansion of things due to the Incorporation doctrine, the answer would be clear "not Congress, no protection."

Assuming you equate "spirit of the amendments" with original intent, then the drafters of the constitution had absolutely no problem with say, your state government having an official church and you being taxed to support it, and being thrown in prison if you refuse to pay, after being tortured into confessing in a secret court.

The "sprit of the amendments" is, in practical parlance, nothing more than contemporary agreement as to what they ought to mean, which IS going to vary enormously across the centuries, and thus this is why you need judicial flexibility.

>>2599487

I dunno, a lot of them seem to be people who are from America in my personal, IRL experience. Most people just don't understand law in general, and constitutional law in particular.

>>2599422

Common law tradition

>>2599512
> I dunno, a lot of them seem to be people who are from America in my personal, IRL experience
Yes, but most people in America are immigrants from countries with Roman Law traditions; they're sure to bring that baggage with them.

Britain could, and regularly does, function perfectly well with literally nothing written down.

>>2599551
> with literally nothing written down
PS. Apart from the precedent cases, obviously.

>>2599422
>Why are so many constitutional amendments so vague?
To get people on the same page, in the same general direction.

>>2599422
You don't want to write the eternal rulebook since the times are always changing, so you make them vague for interpretation.

>>2599551
>Yes, but most people in America are immigrants from countries with Roman Law traditions; they're sure to bring that baggage with them.

What? I haven't looked at any statistics, but I'm 99% sure that most of the U.S. population was in fact born in the country, and aren't immigrants from anywhere. And even if the bulk of the U.S. population is ultimately descended from countries that don't have common law traditions (I'm not sure about that, we have a lot of other Anglo-descended people), given the patent ignorance from people that I know are born here, I somehow doubt that people moving into the country are teaching their kids as to the legal codes of the old country.

>>2599481
biggest mistake was assuming future americans would be up to task of seriously revising the constitution, instead of treating it as a religious document to be worshiped

Because meanings change.
>7th amendment
>$20
>shit ton of money 240 years ago
>barely buys a nice meal in a big city

article 3 of the constitution already states why

>>2599422
so they can define them based on the context and get away with anything they feel like

>>2599422
That's kind of the point of a constitution. Constitutions set out inviolable principles. It's up to congress to work out the details.