It’s possible to change the constitution through a clearly defined process. It just that the process is hard.
If you want to avoid getting a banana republic then it’s important that the laws of the land are honored and the proper mechanism used.
It’s kinda absurd to have a “illegal law”. To my tastes the constitutionality of a law would be an obstacle to getting a bill (isn’t that what law proposals are called?) passed. It is silly to have a law in effect and later withdrawn as it wasn’t a “proper” law. Or is this connected to whether the states or the federation are sovereign?
I can understand for example city statutes being overridden by law, but then if you break a city statute you are not breaking the law as such. I guess the situation might be that state level laws are really closer to statues and only the constitution even attempts to claim the authority of a full law. I am not utterly clear on how a federation works. My whole country is the size of a USA state. We still have separate constitutional and non-constitutional law. Thus the function of regulating the roles of parts to the whole is missing but still the other functions of long-term permanence give cause to have a constitution around. And here non-constitutional laws have stopped into the constitutional standing committee (the organ responsible for drafting constitutional amendments) for being unconstitutional.
It could be argued that the EU has duties of delegating duties of parts to the whole. However there the sovereignty of the member states is clear. If a member state passes a law in violation of a EU directive the union can fine the country in question and it has political PR consequences and in extreme cases the country can be sued to EU court. However it is clear that the countrys law has priority. The union has no hard way of forcing a countrys law to comply against their will (and I think the EU court decisions can only result in massive fines). Then again the union doesn’t even try to enforce any grand idealistic principles. For massive special occasions, like helping greece, every countrys consent is required. While somebody might say that this is a slow decision making process and that it would be faster if a central authority that would have latitude to unilaterally decide what the union does, it isn’t defunct to the point that it can be seen to be a clear failure (and would be a example of a non-mandatory whole-parts delegation that is above a banana republic (meaning that US style constitution isn’t mandatory to get things working on those scales)).
It’s possible to change the constitution through a clearly defined process. It just that the process is hard. If you want to avoid getting a banana republic then it’s important that the laws of the land are honored and the proper mechanism used.
It’s kinda absurd to have a “illegal law”. To my tastes the constitutionality of a law would be an obstacle to getting a bill (isn’t that what law proposals are called?) passed. It is silly to have a law in effect and later withdrawn as it wasn’t a “proper” law. Or is this connected to whether the states or the federation are sovereign?
I can understand for example city statutes being overridden by law, but then if you break a city statute you are not breaking the law as such. I guess the situation might be that state level laws are really closer to statues and only the constitution even attempts to claim the authority of a full law. I am not utterly clear on how a federation works. My whole country is the size of a USA state. We still have separate constitutional and non-constitutional law. Thus the function of regulating the roles of parts to the whole is missing but still the other functions of long-term permanence give cause to have a constitution around. And here non-constitutional laws have stopped into the constitutional standing committee (the organ responsible for drafting constitutional amendments) for being unconstitutional.
It could be argued that the EU has duties of delegating duties of parts to the whole. However there the sovereignty of the member states is clear. If a member state passes a law in violation of a EU directive the union can fine the country in question and it has political PR consequences and in extreme cases the country can be sued to EU court. However it is clear that the countrys law has priority. The union has no hard way of forcing a countrys law to comply against their will (and I think the EU court decisions can only result in massive fines). Then again the union doesn’t even try to enforce any grand idealistic principles. For massive special occasions, like helping greece, every countrys consent is required. While somebody might say that this is a slow decision making process and that it would be faster if a central authority that would have latitude to unilaterally decide what the union does, it isn’t defunct to the point that it can be seen to be a clear failure (and would be a example of a non-mandatory whole-parts delegation that is above a banana republic (meaning that US style constitution isn’t mandatory to get things working on those scales)).