There is a growing drum beat among conservative constitutionalists that one of the core problems our nation faces is that it has drifted off its Constitutional Foundation. The intentional and incremental distortion of our Constitution fills the typical law library. Perhaps the best way to restore the Constitution to its proper role as our nation's social genetic code would be to implement a policy (defined below) of naturally sunseting judicial and legislative actions according to the size of majority votes of that action with reasonable provisions for retroactivity. For the lack of a better name, I call such a proposal, 'Restoring Liberty'. Since it would be a law passed by the Legislative and signed by the Executive branch of our government, it should have supremacy over a self declared right of the Judicial to declare constitutional law for time immortal.
Most of the social and political problems we are now facing are related to how our Constitution has been virtually buried under an avalanche of liberal (Rule of Law) compost to the point that the Constitution has become little more than a historical artifact. Following Jeffersonian ideals, we should have a form of government that renews itself with generational frequency so each generation would have reasonable liberty to determine how to build its own vision of a civil society over the stable foundation of the Constitution. Each generation would have the freedom to enhance their parent's successes and eliminate their failures of laws and rules.
Sunset Incrementalism <=> Sunrise for Liberty
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Judicial |
All Judicial rule of law rulings will sunset in ten years times the number of justices voting in the majority. |
Legislative |
All legislation shall sunset according to the formula of one year plus the combined percent of votes in the Congressional majority. |
With a Restoring Liberty Bill, the two centuries of judicial and legislative garbage would be incrementally cleaned off in a predictable fashion so that each generation would have a reasonable opportunity to define its own social and civil reality over a stable Constitutional foundation to define a society that understands the need to promote individual freedom and personal responsibility in our Social Marketplaces.
Under Restoring Liberty by Sunseting Incrementalism and Sunrising Liberty,
Congress would have ten years or more years of hindsight to judicial activism to come up with legislative solutions for sunseting judicial decisions, or the situation could return to the Judicial Branch for reconsideration. The Justices would have years of hindsight about the effects of the rulings.
Legislation that is supported by all or most legislators (as well rulings with a vast majority of Supreme Court judges) could last for decades while still being subject to adjustment and eventual sunset.
Legislation (where slim majorities permanently take rights and property from slim minorities) would sunset with repeated frequency until the legislators come to understand that mobocracy is not the way to lead our nation into a stable and vibrant future that secures liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
The Constitution and its foundation would be revived, highly studied and understood by many, instead of becoming the dead sea scrolls covered by decades of compost of judicial and legislative activism that is counter to Constitutional premises.
As one sunsets incremental socialism and sunrises liberty, we would incrementally revive the fair and just society envisioned by our Constitutional foundation in a controlled and predictable fashion. In some ways, the resulting system would be analgous to the birth, life and death of individual generations in our society. The Constitution would be the social genetic code analogous to the relatively fixed genetics we each enter the world with. Each generation's parents and grandparents would pass on its social legacy and experience through the laws and rulings it passes with few, if any changes to the constitutional social code. With each sunseted legislation and judicial ruling, the debate over the intent of the Founding Fathers and Constitution and how to best form a civil and just society would be taken up by all in our society. Each generation would have the freedom to reconsider whether to follow the follies and successes of their parents. One generation would not be able to subjugate its posterity to pay for its own retirement. The meaning of the pursuit of happiness and liberty via the American Dream, promoting (not providing) the general welfare and securing liberty to ourselves and our posterity would be in the forefront of the debate, instead of buried underneath decades of leglislative and judicial compost.