| Nice OpEd at the Baltimore Sun about the US and British Constitutions. According to the writer, America, by enshrining a written constitution and Bill of Rights, has an overly legalistic view of "freedom," namely that it can be defined by a formal document. Hence all the efforts to circumvent said document through legalese and technicalities ("enemy combatants," prison camps in places where the U.S. Constitution has no authority, e.g. GitMo, Poland). On the other hand, the British, with no written constitution, have arrived at a point in their political history where "freedom" requires no lawyer to define. It is (to borrow a phrase) "self-evident." All of this is related by the writer to Parliament's recent quoshing of Blair's efforts to lock terror suspects up for 90 days without trial. |
