The constitution presented here is a work in progress and is subject to occasional modifications as I explore different areas of the law. Such modifications (those made 6/8/01) are explained here and in other pages.
Explicitly granting property rights in a person's body may seem a little odd, but provides a sound leagal foundation behind most of the non-interferance rights and several of the other rights explicitly articulated elsewhere in Article I of the constitution.
The traditional commonlaw rights of property: control, exclusion, rental, etc. are one of the deepest and most throughly understood parts of the law; while personal rights pertaining to the body are generally less well articulated and tend to suffer from an inconsistancy. A Property based conception of body rights makes many of these murky issues crystal clear and provides meaning in other rights and elsewhere in the law which would otherwise be open to considerable breadth of interpretation.
I'm torn between the idea of having a universal age and allowing some flexibility to vest rights in minors as they show themselves ready for it. The original text:
was a compromise between 16 and 18, but really any specific age is arbitrary as the situation varries from person to person.II.B2 (old)
The Council and Parlaiment shall provide that all restrictions in legislation justified on the basis of excluding those who are too young shall have the same age as eligibility to vote.
[17 under old II.B1]
The new text allows for a higher universal age for those who do not show themselves capable of handling responsibilities; but also provides considerable flexibility for minors over 15 to vest their rights early, as the issues become important to them if they can show themselves capable of handling it.
Under the old version of this section, consensus comittees could only pass resolutions by a process of unanimity. My view of the political process has become considerably less optimistic in the meantime, and an alternative system which deadlocks less has been provided instead.
Other sections in this chapter were also subject to minor modifications (mainly changes from "all" to "a majority of").
There was no provision to this effect when I wrote it. A friend recently pointed out to me that the chapter could (in fact, would probably have to) be interpreted as applying only to persons accused of a crime and that parlaiment would be free to pass a law imprisoning people for an indefinite term for no reason at all, so long as it wasn't a crime.
My intent was not to disenfranchise people held without being accused of a crime (ie. mental patients, juveniles, asylum seekers, the homeless, etc.) so this text applies the protections of Article IV to anyone lawfully held by the government.
I had not considered the sticky situations which could be produced by abrogation of treaties; given recent history I feel compelled to put this on a par with constitutional violations. I also added impeachability for ministers violating the constitution; which I had intended all along.
A site reader pointed out that allowing the state to regulate the appointment of religious clergy (priests, ministers, rabbis, monks, etc.) through liscencing as an earlier version (debateably) might've permitted could lead to religious opression. So, I made it the sole right of the faith.
The ability to issue advisory opinions on laws without an actual case coming up is common among world constitutional courts... Lack of this power in the US has led to long cycles of back-and-forth between the Courts and Congress in some constitutionally sticky areas (such as campaign regulation) which would easily be resolved by the legislature simply having the power to ask in advance. So, I include that power here.