Bill of Rights - is it necessary?

[LawL]

That's what the Aboriginal people are referred to in this country. Along with such terms as "Indigenous Customary Law" etc.

[seremtan]

It may also be used to enshrine social democratic "rights" as law, rights that often entail compulsory wealth transfers from one group to another.

you never heard of taxes?

[4days]

Define indigenous. He was born to parents born there? Like "Native Americans," Aboriginals in Australia are not native to Australia. Whenever I fill out a form requesting ethnic information that says native american, I check the box.

lol, there's a box for that? with the amount the invasion left alive you'd think they could just keep track of them all by first name.

[Ryoki]

I imagine they have boxes for everything from 'polish-mexican-italian' to 'russian-lithuanian-indian-irish'.

[Christ ON A BIKE]

The nature of defining something is to limit. A Bill of Rights requires the constraint of difficult problems into its limited categories. No matter how comprehensive, it is the nature of language to expressly state, and therefore confine, the rights of the people.

And yet, in the real world...

People living in the US are granted an explicit right to "freedom of speech," but it's hardly limited to the noises that come out of our mouths. Our First Amendment has been successfully applied to everything from the written word to video games to flag-burning, because we understand "speech" to actually mean "expression" in general. The intent is to protect the citizenry's "voice" no matter what form it takes, despite the limited confines of the term itself.

I might even argue that the very limitation of the terminology -- the simple word, "speech" -- has played a major role in generating what is now a rich, mature, and broadly-applicable framework for interpretation. We've had a continual and vigorous conversation about a single word for 200 years... what impact do you suppose that's had on the definition?

[LawL]

There are examples which may seek to disprove my theory. As far as the freedom of speech example goes I'm interested to know why exactly the word "speech" is actually interpreted as "expression"? Is it because it is a piece of ambiguous legislation which required interpretation due to the fact that if it was taken as a literal interpretation it would therefore limit the freedom of expression to speech only?

[Christ ON A BIKE]

In context, it's the freedom of speech and press and assembly -- the Big Three for an 18th Century dude looking to express himself.

I would guess that the authors were intentionally a little ambiguous, or at least not inclined to burden the language with tiny details. They wanted to encourage a free and enduring dialog about the meaning and application of the law, because they saw that kind of forum as being vital to the larger project.

Maybe that's exactly what you're arguing for here? They prefered "the respect of democratic opinion" too: the text is interactive, which is why it's still functional today in a "vast territory" like the US.

[LawL]

They were then careful not to limit the right by interpreting it in a particular fashion as to avoid such a problem. This is definately the correct path to take, but could not be guaranteed of always happening upon the birth of an entirely new Bill of Rights.