Constitutional Amdendment vs. Federal Law Federal law -- and even the regulations written up by Federal agencies -- are no less (perhaps even more) binding, than the Constitution. But they are far easier to pass and alter. Are there any standards on what can only be prohibited (or mandated) by a change in the Constitution vs. a lesser law? For example, the ban on alcohol (known as &quot;Prohibition&quot;) was a Constitutional Amendment (the 18th), whereas the very similar (if not identical) in nature bans on narcotics were simply Federal (and State) laws. My own &quot;gut feeling&quot; -- without any formal legal education -- is that the Constitution proclaims something in general terms, and the laws then implement the details: banning actual particular activities, assigning punishments for different related violations, etcætera. This explanation would make sense, but it does not work for many cases, such as, for example, the ban on narcotics...
Your gut feeling is reasonably close, but not precisely correct. The Constitution sets the baseline rules for the powers of and interactions among the branches of the federal government, as well as the powers of and interactions between the state and federal governments. With only one exception (the dilution of a state's representation in the Senate), the Constitution can be amended to basically anything. It can make anything legal and it can make anything illegal. It generally addresses fairly high-leval legal principles, but there's no reason that it couldn't be amended to include a 9,000-page law specifically addressing every conceivable aspect of the regulation of nuclear energy. As it stands now and as it always has, the Constitution permits the federal government to write laws only with respect to certain topics. The states, meanwhile, retain authority to write laws on virtually any other topic. There are a variety of legal and historical reasons why prohibition took the form of a constitutional amendment while drug laws are handled legislatively, but one important consideration is the scope of Congress's power to regulate &quot;interstate commerce.&quot; At the time of prohibition, it was not clear that Congress could regulate commercial activity that took place entirely within a single state. So if you grew all the ingredients for your whiskey in Kentucky, and you distilled those ingredients in Kentucky, and then you sold your whiskey in Kentucky exclusively to residents of Kentucky, it seemed that your conduct was outside the reach of Congress, and that any attempt to regulate it would be vulnerable to a constitutional challenge. The solution, therefore, was to amend the constitution and give that authority to Congress. About a decade after prohibition ended, though, the Supreme Court decided that the power to regulate interstate commerce includes not just transactions that cross state lines, but also any conduct that “exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce” Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 125 (1942). This broadens the Commerce Clause authority to cover virtually any economic activity. So even if you buy marijuana seeds from your next door neighbor, plant them in your own back yard, grow them for strictly personal use in your own home, and never sell anything to anyone, the courts will hold that your conduct affects the interstate market for marijuana, and is therefore subject to federal regulation. This standard substantially lowers the bar for Congress to act without a constitutional amendment, which is a big part of the reason there hasn't been an amendment to address narcotic use.
A law that conflicts with the Constitution is void The enactment of a treaty is still a law. Even though the US has a Constitutional mechanism for ratifying treaties, once ratified, they are the “law of the land”.
The question seems to somewhat misunderstand the role of courts in the united-states The United States uses a common-law system, ultimately derived from the law of Great Britain as it was at the time of the US Revolution, and thus incorporating its history largely derived from the practices of English Courts. There was a period in this history where much new law was made by judges, although a great deal of it was also made by statutes, that is by Parliament. In theory such judge-made laws merely &quot;discovered&quot; what the law &quot;had always been&quot; but in practice judges made much new law. Since then the incidence of judge made law has greatly declined in the UK, and has declined even more in the US. I think that it is fair to say that Judges in the US do not now make new law with any frequency. There is, however, a major exception to this. In the US, the Federal Constitution is the &quot;supreme law of the land&quot;, and no federal or state statute, regulation or practice may stand if it does not conform to relevant requirements of the federal Constitution. (Nor may any local ordinance, regulation or practice.) But the federal constitution is written mostly in rather broad and general terms, requiring for example that &quot;due process of law&quot; be provided, but but not spelling out in detail what that means. It is therefore up to judges, and particularly to the judges of Federal appellate courts, and most particularly the US Supreme Court, to say when a law, regulation, or practice is in violation of some constitutional requirement, and what must be done to avoid such conflict. One example is the Miranda decision (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) holding that when admissions or confessions by criminal suspects questioned while under arrest were admitted into criminal trials, this violated the defendants' rights against compelled self-incrimination unless they had been advised of their rights under the law, including the right to remain silent and the right to legal counsel. This introduced a new substantive rule of law as a way to enforce a long-existing constitutional provision. The Wikipedia article says: Miranda was viewed by many as a radical change in American criminal law, since the Fifth Amendment was traditionally understood only to protect Americans against formal types of compulsion to confess, such as threats of contempt of court. It has had a significant impact on law enforcement in the United States, by making what became known as the Miranda warning part of routine police procedure to ensure that suspects were informed of their rights. But the concept of &quot;Miranda warnings&quot; quickly caught on across American law enforcement agencies, who came to call the practice &quot;Mirandizing&quot;. A more recent example is the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) in which the US Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment together guaranteed a right to same-sex couples to marry. This again was a new substantive rule, significantly different from the previous practice for most of US history, as a way of defining and enforcing long-existing constitutional provisions. Related to these are cases where a law, or a provision of a law, is held to be unconstitutional, and thus not a valid law at all. An unconstitutional law may not validly be enforced. Such a case was West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) which held that laws requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (flag salute) in schools were unconstitutional. These sorts of actions do not occur in those common-law countries which do not have a formal written constitution that is superior to laws passed by the legislature. That is the case in the UK, for example. Aside from that sort of case, where constitutional rights are being asserted or constitutional requirements are being enforced, the main power of US judges over the law is to interpret the law (both statute and regulation) when it is unclear or ambiguous, and to decide exactly what it will mean and how it will be applied. These interpretations can be changed or completely reversed by later legislative action, that is by new laws passed by Congress or by a State legislature. This sort of interpretation occurs in all common-law countries, and also in civil-law countries, although to a somewhat lesser degree in civil-law countries. In general, civil-law countries tend to spell out their law in more specific detail in laws passed by the legislature, leaving somewhat less room for interpretation by courts and judges. By the way, my understanding is that Indonesia is not strictly a civil-law country, but uses a mixture of systems. The Wikipedia article &quot;Law of Indonesia &quot; says: Law of Indonesia is based on a civil law system, intermixed with customary law and the Roman Dutch law. Before the Dutch colonisation in the sixteenth century, indigenous kingdoms ruled the archipelago independently with their own custom laws, known as adat. Foreign influences from India, China and Arabia have not only affected the culture, but also weighed in the customary adat laws. I cannot speak to the specifics of how the courts of Indonesia have interpreted the law on drugs in that country.
The state can decriminalize all drugs under state law, no problem. They merely have to repeal their version of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act and all related legislation. However, the federal drug statutes, contained in 21 U.S.C. 13, still apply because of the principle of dual sovereignty (if a state tried to explicitly overrule them, the Supremacy Clause would come into play). Let's take a look at some of the statutes under Title 21, Chapter 13, of the U.S. Code. Section 801 of that chapter described Congress's findings in enacting the Controlled Substances Act. §801(3) through (6) provide the basis for federal authority to regulate intrastate affairs with respect to drug trafficking and possession. The section claims that intrastate drugs "contribute to swelling the interstate traffic," and concludes that "federal control of the intrastate incidents of the traffic in controlled substances is essential to the effective control of the interstate incidents of such traffic." Thus, the federal government will continue to enforce the federal controlled substances laws regardless of state legalization. A notable exception is the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which bans DOJ from using federal funds to prosecute medical marijuana programs legal under state law. However, the federal government isn't always successful in (and doesn't always attempt) regulating intrastate behaviors using its interstate commerce authority. For example, the original Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 (since amended and complemented by a 1994 law using the condition-of-funding approach), was struck down by the Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). The law, banning possession of handguns near schools, was found to be an overreach of the Commerce Clause authority. But it was amended by adding the additional interstate nexus of the gun having been moved interstate, which was a very minor limitation in practice. Since it only exempts individuals with a license issued by the state where the school is, it has significantly limited the ability of states to pass "constitutional carry" laws and allow for CCP reciprocity, because many highways and homes fall within its reach. So, if a state is willing to lose all of its federal funding, then Congress can't ever force it to create, maintain, or enforce a state law. But in many ways, the federal government can still enforce its will through criminal law on a number of intrastate activities.
Art. 1 Sect 5 of the Constitution empowers both houses to make their own rules. That means that they can articulate rules regarding what or how you can talk on the floor. It is held that the president of the senate can issue a ruling, and the ruling can be overridden by majority vote. If the Constitution were amended to be more specific about rules of conduct, then some such Senate rules might be unconstitutional and SCOTUS could invalidate the rule. The only specific constitutional requirement on conducting business is that a majority constitutes a quorum.
Your assumption is incorrect -- the Bill of Rights proper does not apply to the states, and pre-14th Amendment only bound the federal government. See Barron v. Baltimore, 32 US 243. States could do whatever they wanted, subject to federal legislation on the matters given to the federal government and subject to their own constitutions. After the Civil War, the federal government was much less OK with so-called "black codes," restricting the rights of freedmen based on explicitly racial distinctions, with not even a fig leaf of justification that it applied to all citizens. The federal government could prevent federal discrimination, but no tools existed to prevent state discrimination. Hence, the 14th Amendment, which bound the states to adopt certain standards in their lawmaking and let Congress take action against those that didn't.
The problem with the proposal is that the Second Amendment doesn't specifically protect the right to bear guns – the word it uses is "arms". Restricting sale of bullets or gunpowder is just as much a restriction on the right to bear arms as restricting sale of guns. Likewise, freedom of the press doesn't refer to just the freedom to use a wine press for printing purposes, it also encompasses the purchase of ink, paper, type and drying racks.
They can't overturn the decision; but they don't have to. The holding in Dobbs was that the US Constitution does not provide a right to an abortion, and so a state law prohibiting abortions is not unconstitutional. Congress can't &quot;overturn&quot; it in the sense that they can't make the Constitution provide such a right, short of a constitutional amendment. But that in itself doesn't stop them from providing such a right in other ways, e.g. through ordinary legislation. Under the Supremacy Clause, such a law would supersede any state bans; provided that it falls within the scope of Congress's enumerated powers, which assertion would itself probably be challenged in court. If it's within their legislative power, then there's no conflict with Dobbs. To give a more mundane example, nobody thinks that there is a constitutional right to have an airline ticket refunded within 24 hours of purchase. If the Supreme Court ever had occasion to rule on the question, they would surely hold that nothing in the US Constitution says that people have this right. But Congress does have the power, under the Commerce Clause, to pass legislation that confers such a right on consumers. They have done so, and this law would not in any way conflict with the aforementioned hypothetical Supreme Court ruling.