Asking whether someone has benefitted from fundamental human rights laws is like asking if someone has benefitted from masonry

>>Asking whether someone has benefitted from fundamental human rights laws is like asking if someone has benefitted from masonry<<

Steel, it is easy to make glib responses. I can point to many instances where good quality masonry has been beneficial, but also point to examples where poor masonry has led to injury and death.

My question is a genuine attempt to quantify, rather than qualify.

What, exactly, is deficient in our legal system that we need additional lawyer-fodder? And rather than produce more weasel-words and some nice warm-and-fuzzies, what is wrong with asking the question - who benefits? Who has benefitted in the past, and who is likely to benefit in the future?

The bill of rights in America protects its citizens every time they have trail through due process, every time they place a vote in the ballot box, every time they join a political association, every time they wish to say something out of vogue, every time congress has to take it into consideration before they try to pass a law.

Just because you cannot see, a bill of rights in action does not mean that it is not protecting your rights and liberties as we speak. That is why Americans only have the patriot act and we have our far worse laws.

In any event, I am against a charter of rights and responsibilities as a bunch of whacked out sociologists would try and enshrine crap into our bill of rights. Long dead are the great men who founded just beautiful documents as the American Bill of rights.

Unfortunately those advocating a Bill of Rights, cannot conceed that anything is wrong with their position.

Bills of Rights are not used to defend the "out of vogue", they are used as a tool of oppression. Maybe you can explain to me how any person should be given the right to insist that the words "in god we trust" or "under god" should be removed from public life (once again the left displays its version of tolerance).

Adopt a Bill of Rights and you'll get more cases like the parents who demanded an apology because they were atheist and their school used the word Christmas too many times....You'll have "winter concerts" rather than Christmas concerts...You'll have criminals using the freedoms which protect from state interference in legitimate activities to protect themselves from the interests of justice (and thats from a criminal defence lawyer).

At the end of the day, rights (as a lecturer of mine once said), cannot be taken be everyone, because there are not enough rights to go around. Bills of Rights merely enshrine the rights of certain groups and individuals as preferred over others, a kind of constitutional discrimination. The creation of one right in one person must create a corresponding duty somewhere else......but that is something that the Bill of Rights advocates either forget or conveniently ignore (because they have the rights and the duties only limit the rights of others).

So the question to be answered, on which side do you place yourselves,

the side of equality for all, and the side of government by the people in a democracy; or

the side of preferential treatment for certain groups and individuals, where government is decided by unelected judges at the behest of vocal lobby groups, who decide policy not on what is best for the people, but what is best for their individual interest group.

Hope you all had a merry christmas, as if the Bill passes, it will only be a matter of time before we cannot wish each other that much and if that occurs, GOD HELP US ALL

dlc,

you have to be kidding about the american bill of rights, remember mccarthyism where a senate could subpeona individuals and ask have you ever been a communist?

remember slavery which the bill of rights tolerated and allowed individual states to regulate

How about the Soviet Union's Bill of Rights brilliant on paper but not enforced. Face facts Bill of Rights are only as good as the people in the system of the government and judiciary.

Bill of Rights to be enforceable have to stand the test of time and therefore must not be easily amended. Thus the morals of the generation writing the Bill of Rights govern without any regard to changes in society.

If a Bill of Rights had been written in the 18th Century would women be allowed to vote, would homosexual acts be legal?

if it was written in biblical times would adulterers be punishable by death?

People need to remove their rose colored glasses and wake up to themselves.

It is remarkable that a group of people chosen to recommend changes to our system of government should be able to completely ignore the central tenet.
We are a democracy.
The constitution which enables the functioning of our legal system and executive government was established by a vote of the people.
Any change to our constitution should only be made by another vote of the people.
This article reflects the wish of a small group of people to inflict their desires on the majority.
This should not happen. The only change that should be made to our constitution is to require a majority vote of the people to enact such changes.
With only a little bit of cynicism it is easy to believe that the reason this committee does not recommend a vote is that the members know it would never be democratically approved.