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Desperately looking for a title
There is also that to be considered, yes. Perhaps not so much the liberal/conservative split, but just the sheer volume of people and the amount of differing opinions that stem from it. This is also why compromise seem so difficult to achieve in the US. No matter what you argue, you're screwing somebody over.
To align it with the constitution conversation required a bit of work. Bear with me. Suppose, for example, that a referendum is made to change the constitution and nuke the 2nd amendment and bring UK-style gun control in the US. First up you have to make a massively huge and expensive referendum. This referendum doesn't include protections against mob rule, mostly because there are not any legal precedents (which is where I see marcos_eirik 's point about codified law) and partly because it could be argued it is less representative if it does (see: Trump and the EC). Now you have sheer populism deciding a very controversial, extensively divisive topic which arguments for and against vary from region to region. All you need is NY, CA, and PA to be organized enough to decide the future of cattle ranchers in Texas who may need weapons to shoot varmint(or cattle robbers), people in Georgia who need them for self defense against people who want to make them squeal like a piggy, and people in Florida battling the sheer amount of crazy from that state.
It's not like they have massive media and P.R machines in NY and CA that could sway the votes of the less informed or the uninterested-in-researching, have they?
This is a very simplified example, of course, but I believe it presents my argument (and prizrak 's ) to an extent. The constitution would most likely lose power if changed. And although codified law does have its (undeniable) advantages, especially in objectivity, it could be rather difficult to frame them without large amounts of interpretation and referrals from older case law. An example of this is the classic "Is a lemonade stand done by kids legal?" example. Codified health, permit, and labor laws say no. Interpretation says (more often than not) yes.
To align it with the constitution conversation required a bit of work. Bear with me. Suppose, for example, that a referendum is made to change the constitution and nuke the 2nd amendment and bring UK-style gun control in the US. First up you have to make a massively huge and expensive referendum. This referendum doesn't include protections against mob rule, mostly because there are not any legal precedents (which is where I see marcos_eirik 's point about codified law) and partly because it could be argued it is less representative if it does (see: Trump and the EC). Now you have sheer populism deciding a very controversial, extensively divisive topic which arguments for and against vary from region to region. All you need is NY, CA, and PA to be organized enough to decide the future of cattle ranchers in Texas who may need weapons to shoot varmint(or cattle robbers), people in Georgia who need them for self defense against people who want to make them squeal like a piggy, and people in Florida battling the sheer amount of crazy from that state.
It's not like they have massive media and P.R machines in NY and CA that could sway the votes of the less informed or the uninterested-in-researching, have they?
This is a very simplified example, of course, but I believe it presents my argument (and prizrak 's ) to an extent. The constitution would most likely lose power if changed. And although codified law does have its (undeniable) advantages, especially in objectivity, it could be rather difficult to frame them without large amounts of interpretation and referrals from older case law. An example of this is the classic "Is a lemonade stand done by kids legal?" example. Codified health, permit, and labor laws say no. Interpretation says (more often than not) yes.