Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I.e., the argument is over whether you need to be in the army to carry 
>> firearms, and it's not worded in a way to make that clear.
> 
>   And of course *changing* it to make it unambiguous is a big no-no?

Not at all - that's what a constitutional amendment would do. It's just 
intentionally difficult. It takes something like 2/3rds of the federal 
legislators to vote for it, and then also 3/4ths of the states to also 
agree. http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/usconstitution/a/constamend.htm is a 
good summary. Note that there's a part in the constitution that talks about 
how to change the constitution. Many people credit that (in part) with the 
longevity of the government here.

It's the job of the Supreme Court to decide what ambiguous laws mean w.r.t. 
the federal Constitution. And there, there are two schools of thought. One 
is that it should be interpreted the way the original authors meant, while 
the other is that it should be interpreted in a way that makes more sense 
nowadays. So, for a simple example, the constitution says the federal 
government gets to regulate ships and trade on the open sea. Makes sense, as 
the sea isn't owned by any specific state. Then people invented airplanes. 
Are airplanes like ships, to be regulated by the federal government? Or are 
airplanes completely private, as they are unmentioned in the constitution. 
You can see how it might make sense either way. If it needs to be changed, 
then the legislators should change it, is the thought.

With the fire arms, it's more like "everyone carried guns back then, so we 
should go with what the original authors meant" vs "simply having guns 
doesn't make you able to fight an army, so the phrase should mean an actual 
army."

Unfortunately (in this case at least), the Supreme Court tends to listen to 
only the very specific arguments of the specific case and tries to avoid 
making any sweeping decisions. As a fictional example, if the court case is 
about freedom of expression for students in schools, they might decide that 
since the student was chanting lyrics from a song as a protest, that's 
copyright violation, and freedom of expression doesn't include copyright 
violation. Which of course completely ignores the question of whether in 
general schools are allowed to punish students for chanting protests on 
school grounds.

Since the supreme court's decisions have the force of law (in a default sort 
of way), there's no need for legislature to change the law if they like how 
the supreme court decided. There's really no upside to it for a typical 
politician (as opposed to an honest, principled politician), as they'd 
simply be exposing themselves to the ire of the public in order to make a 
law something that is already a law. No politician in favor of allowing 
abortions is going to try to pass a law enshrining the right to have an 
abortion in law, since the supreme court already laid out the circumstances 
of that and every pro-life nut case[1] would vote the politician out next 
election.

The lower courts also decide on ambiguous laws. For example, is a pregnant 
woman allowed to drive by herself in the car pool lane? How about a hearse 
with a dead body in the back? Etc.

The layer below the federal supreme court has a handful of different courts 
(called the federal circuit courts, because they used to actually travel 
around from city to city in the horse/steam train days), and when one of 
them decides one way on a subject, and the other decides the other way, the 
supreme court usually gets involved.

I hope that helps clarify.



[1] Which is to say, everyone where preventing abortions is more important 
to them than any other possible political feature. Not that all pro-life 
people are nut cases.
-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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