Re: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Disambiguation of 4.1.5
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"AJT" => Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
"CMC" => C.M. Connelly <c@eskimo.com>
AJT> I imagine that the declaration of independence has little
AJT> legal force, unlike the constitution.
True, although the spirit of the Declaration certainly informs
debates about the intentions of the Founders.
AJT> In contrast, the social contract and the DFSG do affect
AJT> our day to day workings, and are of more than historical
AJT> interest. The Debian Manifesto seems a better analogy,
AJT> to my mind.
I wasn't aware of the Debian Manifesto (it doesn't seem to be on
debian.org), but the Manifesto (I found it elsewhere) is much
closer to the kind of document the Declaration of Independence is.
My point was that if the section on non-free software in the
Social Contract was tweaked to remove specifics about how Debian
will support non-free software, the Social Contract could qualify
for untouchable manifesto status. Whether that would be desirable
is an open question.
CMC> The U.S. Constitution contains rules that
CMC> allow it to be *amended* (*not* modified, notice),
AJT> From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
AJT> Amend \A*mend"\ (&?;), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Amended; p. pr. & vb.
AJT> To change or modify in any way for the better [...]
You'd like the definition in the current ``standard''
(Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary) even better:
1: to put right; esp : to make emendations in (as a text)
(Your definition is now number 2.)
In any case, what I was thinking of was that the U.S. Constitution
is not amended in the same way that U.S. law is -- laws are
generally changed by deleting, adding, and changing words; the
Constitution is changed by adding new ``amendments'' that redefine
or invalidate parts of the original text or previous amendments
without changing that text. Thus the seventeenth amendment
redefines the rules in the original Constitution for electing
senators to allow the governor of a state to appoint a replacement
if a senator dies or resigns; and the eighteenth amendment (the
Volstead Act) prohibits ``the manufacture, sale, or transportation
of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or
the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory
subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes'',
whereas the twenty-first amendment repeals the eighteenth
amendment.
I don't know the specific reason that the U.S. Constitution is
only amended by addition (it's not required by Article V, which
covers the procedures for making amendments), but it is certainly
true that that method preserves the historical integrity of the
Constitution by keeping the original language and all changes to
it in the document. Since Debian doesn't modify its constitution
in that way, instead taking the approach used for laws in the
U.S., my comments are beside the point.
CMC
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Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space,
a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.
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C.M. Connelly c@eskimo.com SHC, DS
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