Was the Constitution meant to be perpetual? Was the Constitution of the United States meant to be perpetual? The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation which specifically says is perpetual yet the constitution has no such wording. The founding fathers had no authority to bind anybody but themselves. And also it states in the Constitution “ No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President” The “at the time of the adoption of this Constitution” leads me to believe they did not want anybody become president that was not a citizen at the time it was adopted. They wanted the people to write a new constitution like they do with the States constitution.
Was the Constitution of the United States meant to be perpetual? Yes, the Constitution of the United States was meant to be perpetual, subject to the amendment procedure contained in the Constitution itself. There are two possibilities, either it was perpetual, or it was intended to cease to be effective at some point in time that is defined somewhere. No court or legal scholar has ever seriously suggested that the Constitution had an expiration date. Neither does any legislation ever adopted (apart from the efforts of the former Confederate States to leave the Union without its consent which was repudiated by the U.S. Civil War and related legal and political proceedings). As Nate Eldredge noted in a comment, the preamble of the United States Constitution states that it was adopted &quot;secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity&quot;. The fact that the Constitution contained a transition provision in relation to its &quot;natural born citizen&quot; requirement for a country that didn't exist prior to 1776 does nothing to change any of this analysis. The founding fathers had no authority to bind anybody but themselves. The assumed rule that someone has no authority to bind anyone but themselves is not now, and never has been, the law. The authority of people to bind people other than themselves, including successors who aren't even born yet, to legal documents, is long standing in both Western and Eastern legal systems. Agents can bind principals. Employees can bind employers. Union officials can bind their members. Partners can unilaterally bind each other. People creating trusts can bind the trustees and beneficiaries of the trust long after they are dead; charitable trusts can be perpetual. Military officers can bind their subordinates. Parents can bind their children in many jurisdictions. Guardians and conservators can bind their wards. Executors of estates can bind a decedent's heir and devisees. Home owners associations can bind member property owners and their guests. Governments can bind their residents. Sovereigns can bind their subjects. Before the modern concept of property arose in the early modern period (i.e. prior to around 1500 CE), real estate ownership was primarily hereditary and inalienable, as was the serf-lord relationship. Transfers of property are not undone when the person who makes them ceases to exist. Real estate covenants routinely &quot;run with the land&quot; after they are created by the current owners. The legal obligations you enter into while you are alive are binding upon your estate at death. In the civil law countries with legal systems based upon those of Continental Europe (derived in turn from Roman law), the default rule is still that the obligations of a decedent are binding upon the decedent's next of kin, although it is not terribly difficult to opt out of that default rule in the heir's discretion after death if they elect to do so (and many do). Until not long before the Industrial Revolution, in the late early modern period of history, most Western legal systems, and East Asian legal systems, provided that your descendants continued to be bound by your debts and could not opt out of that obligation. When a legal entity is bound, all successor owners, directors, officers, managers, and partners of the entity are bound perpetually by anything done by someone with apparent authority to do so and by judgments entered against the entity. The United States of America is, of course, a legal entity which is not operated for profit, so the ability of its founders to bind successive generations is a pedestrian principle that follows from ordinary non-constitutional law anyway. A treaty between nations are binding long after every single person who signed of on it is dead. The assumed rule that someone can bind only themselves simply does not pass even casual examination.
First of all, as noted in the comments, Babylon Bee is SATIRE. It's not intended to be news, just entertainment. But the real question is whether or not a President COULD do such a thing. Or perhaps better, could a President attempt to do something like this. If a President did attempt to do this, it would be totally without precedent and also without any constitutional authority. Since the US Constitution enumerates the powers between the branches and gives the President only the authority to appoint, with the advice of the Senate, a SCOTUS justice, trying to change things by giving an existing justice 2 votes would almost certainly be immediately challenged by the Senate. It also seems unlikely that such an action would be upheld as constitutional. Of course this is all speculative since nothing of this nature has happened.
Yes There is no general legal prohibition on perpetual contracts. What you describe is not a perpetual contract A perpetual contract is one where at least one parties obligations are indefinitely ongoing and there is no mechanism in the contract (outside breach or repudiation) for terminating it. The contract you describe has a mechanism for termination albeit only available to one party. Perpetual contracts can be entered into knowingly and willingly - most perpetuities, where a person leaves the income on an investment to a university or charity forever subject to conditions, are of this type. Or they can be entered into accidentally, for example, a fixed term contract with an automatic renewal where the renewal term is not specified is a perpetual contract. The important point is there must be no explicit mechanism in the contract for bringing the contract to an end for it to be a perpetual contract. In commercial arrangements, courts may imply a term that the parties can terminate on reasonable notice but this is subject to all the normal limitations. Your example As described, because there is an explicit term allowing termination, this is not a perpetual contract. Such a contract would be subject to the normal common law doctrine of unconscionably (which it almost certainly is) and, in some jurisdictions, consumer protection laws against unfair contract terms.
The 5th amendment of the US constitution reads: No person shall ... be deprived of life ... without due process of law and the 14th amendment reads: ... nor shall any State deprive any person of life... without due process of law In Roe v Wade the majority opinion expressly acknowledged: The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a &quot;person&quot; within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. (emphasis added) The majority in Roe v Wade then concluded: the word &quot;person,&quot; as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn In Dobbs, the majority instead stated: Today’s decision therefore does not prevent the numerous States that readily allow abortion from continuing to readily allow abortion ... all of the States may evaluate the competing interests and decide how to address this consequential issue ... There is ample evidence that the passage of these laws was instead spurred by a sincere belief that abortion kills a human being. Many judicial decisions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries made that point. [numerous citations] One may disagree with this belief (and our decision is not based on any view about when a State should regard prenatal life as having rights or legally cognizable interests) ... Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth. In conclusion, though it is recognized in Roe v Wade that if the unborn is considered a &quot;person&quot; then there is a &quot;right to life&quot;, no justice has indicated in an opinion (including concurring or dissenting opinions) that &quot;person&quot; in the constitution includes the unborn.
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.
Note the following argument: the landmark 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland, which ruled that state officials cannot obstruct “the measures of a government [the federal government] created by others as well as themselves.” “In other words,” Kalt and Amar summarize, “a single state cannot use its power to derail the functioning of the United States.” (Amar is a Yale constitutional law professor, Kalt, his student) On the other hand, you have the argument by a Hofstra constitutional law professor that the 25th amendment can be applied when the President is occupied with a criminal case, ergo, the functioning of the United States can be carried on unimpared. At the end-of-the-day there is no absolute answer as it is still being argued academically and has never been specifically settled by the courts.
Only for certain parts of the constitution, and not for the parts you are asking about. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has squarely stated that neither the First Amendment nor the Fifth Amendment "acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens."13 For more than a century, the Court has recognized that the Equal Protection Clause is "universal in [its] application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to differences of ... nationality."14 The Court has repeatedly stated that "the Due Process Clause applies to all 'persons' within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent."15 When noncitizens, no matter what their status, are tried for crimes, they are entitled to all of the rights that attach to the criminal process, without any distinction based on their nationality.16 Are Foreign Nationals Entitled to the Same Constitutional Rights As Citizens? - David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center
Does this mean that anyone who is born in the US is automatically a US citizen, whether they want it or not? Yes (subject to a couple of exceptions, namely the children of diplomats with full immunity and the children of a hostile foreign occupier). Or does this amendment just offer the possibility of requesting citizenship? In other words: is there an action to be made in order to become a US citizen when born in the US (and therefore one is not before this action is performed)? No. For someone who falls under the 14th amendment's citizenship clause, the only way to avoid being a US citizen is to relinquish or renounce it, which generally means that one is stuck with the US citizenship for at least 18 years. Most countries' citizenship laws, or at least all of those with which I am familiar, operate this way—automatically—for "normal" cases of acquisition of citizenship by virtue of the circumstances of birth. This is true whether the citizenship derives from the place of birth or from the parents' citizenship.