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Comment by dguest | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how a lot of newer countries just put the right to water directly in the constitution. South Africa says some stuff about the government having an obligation toward "progressive realization" of the goal [1], whereas Slovenia just straight says water is a right [2].

[1]: https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rig...

[2]: https://www.uradni-list.si/glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/12...

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The problem with the US is Americans treating their Constitution like some kind of Bible, untouchable and beyond reproach, when in reality it should have been a constantly evolving document.

South Africa has one of the best constitutions in the world on paper because the authors very recently had to reconcile with and forgo their apartheid past. And they had a number of templates to adapt from, including the US, France, Germany, India, etc. Older countries tend to have shittier constitutions.

Oh, I think GOP is nicely evolving US constitution with a little help from supreme court

The writers of the US constitution were well aware of how to enumerate positive rights, as they were common in the state constitutions, as well in many European countries' declarations of rights in restraint of monarchs. Many of them resisted this, especially James Madison, who called them mere parchment barriers and ineffective, even counterproductive. Madison's side mostly held sway, where the US constitution focused on the structure of government. The anti-federalists and other factions were the ones who pushed for enumerated positive rights, and they won only some concessions, like the Bill of Rights, which Madison and others worked to limit, such as phrasing some of them in negative terms.

You can disagree with Madison, but he certainly wasn't ignorant about these questions. He just felt positive rights were better secured through dynamic legislative processes within a stable and responsive democratic framework. The hard part is trying to maintain a responsive democracy. Without that positive rights are empty promises, anyhow, as they often are in these newer constitutions. One of the problems with making promises you can't keep is it delegitimizes government, which furthers the normalization of corruption and unlawfulness.

Our Constitution can evolve. This whole case is about an amendment to the Constitution! We don't evolve it by reinterpreting the text but by amending the text.

This was true at some point in history, but not now. It's been 34 years since the last constitutional amendment in the US, 55 years since the last successful proposal. And arguably almost the last hundred or so years of their amendments are minor, the heavy-hitters that everyone quotes and sees as truly changing the direction of the country are all from the 18th and 19th centuries.

There will probably be no more amendments in the foreseeable future, possibly ever. The US does the exact opposite of what you said - they don't amend, they reinterpret. All the schools of thought that enable creative interpretations for twisting ancient, outdated writing into what you want it to say are because of that. For all intents and purposes, the US constitution is seen as unchangeable.

Surely you would expect the rate of change to drop off after a time, right? The Constitution is not a very long document, so it cannot contain an infinite number of errors. At some point they’ll all be fixed and then no more evolution will be required. There have been some amendments that corrected omissions from the Constitution, but I don’t see how there could be an infinite number of those either.

And I don’t see why you think no future evolution can happen. The process for amending the Constitution hasn’t changed any. It remains as easy or as hard as it ever was.

But I suppose you are right that we often have activist judges who think that it is their job to reinterpret the words of the Constitution. There are quite a few bad rulings that have resulted from that. But the ideal is that we don’t reinterpret the words. It is a human failing that we sometimes succumb to the temptation.

> Surely you would expect the rate of change to drop off after a time, right?

Why would you expect that, when societal change historically accelerates over time?

> The process for amending the Constitution hasn’t changed any.

In the sense that walking to work didn't change when people moved to the suburbs.

Jefferson wrote on this: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...

"On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, & what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, & consequently may govern them as they please. But persons & property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course, with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, & no longer. Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, & not of right. It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly & without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal & vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal."

France has had 11 amendments to its constitution in the 21st century, South Africa and Ireland have had 13 each, Germany has had 20, and India 27.

There isn't really any reason to suppose that the USA should be so very different.

Sometimes the comparison can't be made directly because the US Constitution embodies the concept of unenumerated rights.

Slovenia is also a rainy country with lots of rivers and snow in the winter.

I am not sure how "right to water" would work in arid parts of the US. You cannot legally demand what physically is not there.

US has a lot of underground water, that is starting to run a bit low atm, but it's not like they are on desert world. The reason there is no political will to ensure access to water in US, is because its good way to make money, and any legal guarantees as to quality/safety of the water would unreasonably lower investors' return

> You cannot legally demand what physically is not there.

But you can demand what is provided to you by public utility isn't knowingly and secretly poisoned with a neurotoxin.

people do learn from history, even through too little

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