{"id":3440,"date":"2012-02-07T19:22:10","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T03:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/?p=3440"},"modified":"2012-02-07T19:23:35","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T03:23:35","slug":"obama-and-communist-press-make-push-to-end-u-s-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/obama-and-communist-press-make-push-to-end-u-s-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Communist Press Make Push to End U.S. Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe the People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Loses Appeal With People Around the World<\/h3>\n

By ADAM LIPTAK
\nNY Times<\/a> WASHINGTON \u00e2\u20ac\u201d The Constitution has seen better days.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sure, it is the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.<\/p>\n

In 1987, on the Constitution\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated<\/a> that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to a new study<\/a> by David S. Law<\/a> of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg<\/a> of the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Among the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s democracies,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II<\/a>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige. …. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe the People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Loses Appeal With People Around the World By ADAM LIPTAK NY Times WASHINGTON \u00e2\u20ac\u201d The Constitution has seen better days. Sure, it is the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s founding document and sacred text. And it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[11,455],"tags":[7024,224,7025,7023,7027,7026,6864],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}