It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges.

A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will.

We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.

Note that this change is not getting rid of the Lords; it's just getting rid of Hereditary piers - i.e. those passed down through generations. We'll still have Lords who have been selected by previous governments within their lifetime; so they still provide that speed bump; but do it in a way that means they were at some point chosen by an elected body.

> You could argue the House of Lords did the same

It can still do the same thing without hereditary peers. A slow-moving, conservative (in the classical sense) upper chamber is a classic in bicameral systems, it is not specific to the House of Lords.

The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.

Just in case someone gets the wrong end of the stick, the UK isn’t getting rid of the House of Lords, just the hereditary members (of which there aren’t many).

That view is a leftover from a bygone era, when others could look at the US with often grudging admiration. Today? The US itself doesn't think much of itself, and to the rest of us it is a cautionary tale.

yes. just because it is unfashionable to argue in favor of aristocracy does not mean that it doesn’t have its own intrinsic set of benefits and drawbacks… the drawbacks of ultra democracy (populism, etc.) are all cast aside as the innocent folly of people yearning to be free but not knowing whereof to yearn (“it’s not a system problem, it’s a people problem, but we must no matter what condemn ourselves to people problems because anything else is anathema to “liberty”, or whatever”). but dare utter one word in favor of conservatism in the original, true sense, and it is as though democracy is an unalloyed good with absolutely no downside. like, clearly we should have a direct democracy with no senate and no house, no? anything else is just allowing the Powers That Be to patriarchy everything!

It's only a speed bump for progressive laws while the most reactionary garbage gets fast tracked with their approvals.

You get something far worse in the US. Which is a government that no longer feels any need to either pass or be bound by laws.

I think a good revising chamber is critical to good democracy, though the Lords recently have been playing silly buggers around the Employment Rights Act and ignoring the Salisbury Convention (which is that they shouldn’t block manifesto commitments).

I do think the USA goes too far, which has led to frustration among the public and contributed to Trump and the resulting behaviour. I’ve said before that I think the US House of Representatives should have a mechanism to override Senate speed bumps, though not without effort. The idea is to encourage the legislature to compromise but maintain the “primacy” of the House if the Senate is being obstinate. Something like the Parliament Act, is what I’d have in mind.

Note that even though the U.S. has a Constitution, the entire U.S. government is still, like the UK, highly reliant on inexplicit norms many of which go back hundreds of years before the U.S. was founded. They’re both still English common law systems.

I love this about Ireland because they are such a young republic. And democratic systems are a technology. Something that we understand better over time, and somewhere new can pick and choose from what is best, where it is _extremely_ hard to change existing systems in established countries.

> duopolies in the US and the UK

for better or worse, the duopoly is disappearing in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are getting passed by Reform and the Greens

> It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.

No. As you have surely seen, the US written constitution just gets contorted to "clearly" mean whatever it is the partisan Justices decided suits their current purpose. The effect is extremely corrosive - they even decided it means their guy is above the law.

I agree that using a better voting system (STV) is a meaningful benefit and worth replicating elsewhere, but I don't agree that having a written constitution is better. I think Ireland would be in roughly the same place if it had the same arrangement as in Westminster in that respect.

For example when Ireland wrote a constitutional amendment saying abortion is illegal under basically any circumstances, the people the Irish were electing would also have voted against legislation allowing abortion, but by the time the poll was held to amend to say abortion must be legal, the legislators elected were also mostly pro-choice. So if there was no written constitution my guess is that roughly the outcome is the same, in 1975 an Irish woman who needs an abortion has to "go on holiday" abroad and come back not pregnant or order pills and hope they're not traced to her, and in 2025 it's just an ordinary medical practice. Maybe the changes happen a few years earlier, or a few years later.

Edited: Clarify that the abortion prohibition was itself an amendment, as was the removal of that prohibition.

> It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling

All sufficiently large governments (really all organizations of any kind) are necessarily like this, from the most successful attempts at open societies to the most autocratic. They all require constant vigilance both to perform their intended function and to preserve themselves into the future.

Most western democracies have exactly the same fault, maybe having unscrupulous, shameless legislators are the end state of the current models of democracy being practiced.

Constitution and laws are just pieces of paper. They only matter if the population acts as if they matter. Liberia has the same Constitution as the US.

While no democratic system is completely protected from tyrants, at least the UK (and the Commonwealth nations who inherited their principles) uses the living tree doctrine in its courts, which means that the written text is not sacrosanct and the intention and usage is to be considered. That and unwritten tradition has force of law and can be challenged in court. Look at Boris Johnson's reversal of his prorogation as an example.

There's really no way around the possibility that whatever you've written down in your constitution will be ignored in the heat of the moment, or become degraded over time.

But they're cycled through much more rapidly, and seem generally more vulnerable than the dictators in the U.S or otherwise. A small concession to be sure.

It seems like a fundamental failure of government that in many cases, there are no consequences for deliberately or accidentally screwing your people. You either get murdered eventually or the country is just left to fix itself later, which disproportionately affects people with little resources.

Being able to vote in a strong leader to fix things directly is a feature. Democracy is not always the answer and when it is it can be too slow when time matters.

Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was established in 1982. We're still in the process of figuring out what it means (and as a living document, the interpretation will change over time).

It's messy. But I'd much rather that than need to ask "What would Pierre Trudeau think of this situation?"

Well, SCOTUS sometimes produces really weird Humpty-Dumpty explanations for very common words.

Such as that growing marijuana plants in your own home for your own consumption influences interstate commerce and is therefore within powers of the Congress to regulate/ban.

In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".

What on earth are you talking about? They were elected in 2024. If anything its the issues caused over the previous 14 years which must be fixed.

No idea why this was down-voted, it's true. It's replacing one hereditary system based on inheritance of titles with another hereditary system based on inheritance of capital.

> Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time

There is an informal understanding that the government gives a certain number of life peerages to the opposition and minor parties, subject to the government being able to veto individual appointments they find objectionable. So it literally isn’t true that everyone gets one by being friends with the PM-although it certainly helps

Some parties reject their entitlement-the only reason why there are no SNP life peers, is the SNP has a longstanding policy to refuse to appoint any. There are currently 76 LibDem peers, 6 DUP, 3 UUP, 2 Green and 2 Plaid Cymru. SNP would very quickly get some too if they ever changed their mind about refusing the offer. The Northern Ireland nationalist parties (Sinn Fein and SDLP) likewise have a policy against nominating life peers.

As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered."

Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.

50% + 1 is called democracy. Civil liberties are more liable to be swept away by minorities that come to power. In the US, the republicans often do this because they have minority popular support but a disproportionate representation in government. So the key is to make sure that it's 50% + 1 but also representative of the real population.

The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.

I'm a little torn on this one. On the one hand, people are bad epistemologists and lots of countries manage with similarly limited jury trials. On the other, we're doing it for cost reasons, which I think is the worst basis imaginable for such a move

In the US it's just called a "bench trial." You can ask for one. It's often advantageous to do so.

The thing is, the reason for the delays and inefficiencies is not really juries. It's mostly much more mundane things like the prison service not sending defendants to court at the right time, translators not turning up when they are supposed to, buildings which are falling apart, technology not working properly, and court time being double-booked. It's an administrative failure, not a problem with the system.

Alongside removing the right to trial by jury, perhaps more alarmingly the government are also planning to remove appeal rights from "minor" cases (from magistrates to the Crown Court). The current statistics are that more than 40% of those appeals are upheld.

The planned changes won't fix any of these things, but it will cause fundamental damage to trust in the system and result in many miscarriages of justice.

You probably know this - but in most jurisdictions in the US, including federal, charges have to be approved by a grand jury of your peers.

There’s an old adage “a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich”* implying that the grand jury is easily mislead - but in my anecdotal experience of serving on a grand jury - this isn’t really true. We definitely said no to overreaches.

And you can also see this happening in high profile cases with the Trump administration:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-sandwic...

Ignoring that, it’s not clear to me why removing jury trials would reduce the likelihood of a prosecutor throwing a larger number of charges at a defendant. Prosecutors want to demonstrate a record of convictions. That career pressure is still going to exist without jury trials - they’re going to throw anything they can and see what sticks.

*Fun Fact - Sol Wachtler, the judge who coined this, was later convicted of multiple felonies, including blackmailing an ex-lover and threatening to kidnap her daughter. A bit more substantial than a ham sandwich.

American Bar Associaton agrees. ABA Plea Bargain Task Force Report is sad read. US criminal justice system is horrific and plea bargaining is big reason for it.

> The australian senate, before 2015 or so, used to contain enough fun cooks that legislation had to get broad support to make it through. It was a pretty decent check against the beige dictatorship. But since they updated the voting rules to prevent the cool minor parties from holding the balance, its just been a massive rubber stamp

Current numbers in Australian Senate: Government 29, Opposition 27, Crossbench 20, 39 needed for majority. So if the opposition opposes a government bill, the government needs 10 crossbench senators to vote for it - if the Greens support it, that’s enough; if they oppose it, the government can still pass the bill if they get the votes of the 10 non-Green crossbench senators (4 One Nation; 3 independents; 3 single senator minor parties)

I can’t see how this is by any reasonable definition a “rubber stamp”

Sort of. They can and do amend bills, but they can't overrule the Commons on anything the latter regards as important.

Read/watch this interview [1] with Ada Palmer on her new book about the Renaissance. Florence did this for a time.

> You put names in a bag. You examine all of the merchant members of guilds. You choose which ones are fit to serve, meaning not ill and dying, not insane, not so deeply in debt that they could be manipulated by the people whom they owe money to. Their names go in a bag. You choose nine guys at random. They rule the city. They are put in a palace where they rule the city from that tower.

> They’re actually locked in the tower for the duration of their time in office because if they left the tower, they could be bribed or kidnapped. They rule the city for two or three months. At the end, they are thanked for their service and escorted out, and then a different nine guys share power for the next three months. It’s a power sharing that is designed to be tyrant-proof because you need consensus of nine randomly selected guys to decide to do anything.

[1] https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ada-palmer

Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions.

These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power.

This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

How about both? A chamber of life peers and a chamber of temporary randomly selected representatives.

It's interesting how people never even learn about any upsides to that. Even if the balance comes out on the side of elected officials, it's good to at least have some idea of why so many societies have worked like that (other than "they were dumb and evil I guess").

The main thing is long-term stability and limits on backstabbing and ruthless competition. Sure it doesn't bring it to zero, plenty of bloody examples from history. But when someone gets close to power for the first time and might be out of there quite soon, and have to watch out for being replaced quickly, they will behave quite differently than someone who plans ahead in decades and generations (if all things go well). If you have a short time under the sun, you better extract all you can while it lasts.

It's kind of like a lifetime appointment or like tenure, except also across generations. Tenure allows professors to ignore short-term ups and downs and allows them some resilience and slack (though funding is still an issue). Similarly a nobleman can "relax" and take a longer-term view on things. The failure mode is that they stop caring and become lazy and just enjoy their position.

Heredity is only one of many flavours of cronyism.

It provides an additional check. Much like a monarch, a noble's interests are tied to the welfare of the country itself. Without the country, they're just a toff with some money and an overinflated sense of self-importance.

The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches.

When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.

Aren't you supporting parent's point? The senate is elected these days after all ...

> It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff

That's a feature, not a bug ;).[0]

0: Any episode of "Yes, Minister!"

> 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

That's a separate argument.

My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...

> They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats.

When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny.

> They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

> There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)

> Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum

Sure, they are parasites descended from thugs as opposed to thugs descended from thugs. But you don't see them renouncing their unearned wealth built on rapine, slavery and colonial exploitation, which is to this day largely exempted from property taxes.

Getting rid of hereditary nobility has worked out pretty well for the USA.

Well, for all USSRs issues, getting rid of their nobility was one of the best things they did.

Should have used it to prevent Brexit.

Just look at the US right now to see how civil military control can go off the rails too.

It happened in Australia in 1975, and Chuck was directly involved in it.