Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously
Before I jump into this minor debate again, I want to emphasize to
William Leisner that the length of the Articles is a mere nitpick and that it in no way detracted from the quality of
Losing the Peace, which is
excellent and quite inspirational.
^How long is the Magna Carta?...or the US Bill of Rights?
This translation of the Magna Carta (it was originally written in Latin) is 3,575 words long and reaches about six pages in a Word document set for Times New Roman with 1" top and bottom margins and 1.25" side margins. It has a preamble, 37 main paragraphs that would probably be called articles or sections if it were being written today, and two closing paragraphs (one of which mostly consists of names of witnesses and signatories).
The
United States Constitution as originally passed by the thirteen states -- that is, without any of the amendments, including the first ten, which are collectively known as the Bill of Rights -- was 4,543 words long.
It had a preamble, seven articles, and a concluding paragraph and signatures. The longest article, Article I, has 10 sections; Article II, 4 sections; Article III, 3 sections; Article IV, 4 sections; and Articles V, VI, and VII each have one unnumbered section. Depending on how you format it, comes to about 11 pages or so in a standard Word document.
With the Bill of Rights added, the Constitution comes to 5,025 words and 12 pages. No amendment in the Bill of Rights was more than a paragraph long.
With the rest of the amendments passed since the Bill of Rights added, the Constitution comes to 7,643 words, or about 18 pages. Most of the amendments are only one or two paragraphs long and possess only two sections.
So even if we counted the preamble, concluding paragraph and signatures, and the amendments as individual articles, the U.S. Constitution would only be 36 articles long.
Don't the Ferengi have over 200 Rules of Acquisition?
The Rules of Acquisition are the Ferengi holy book, not their governing document. It'd be more akin to the Bible than a constitution.
When drafting a document that outlines rules for a society, it can tend to get a bit long.
Not really. A constitution is not meant to establish all of the laws of a state, but to establish the basic process by which the state will function and create laws, and the rights of the state's inhabitants. A good constitution actually needs to be as short and simple as possible; it is the role of
legislation to be long and complex.
Humanity has several different Bill's of Rights in several nations...just imagine one set of rules for 100's of billions of people across several dozen worlds
Well, I could easily see the set of Federation statutes -- laws passed by the Council and President; that is, the Federation equivalent to the
United States Code -- reaching 109 articles or more, certainly. The U.S. Code has 50 titles of varying lengths -- it's so long that I am frightened of what it would look like in a Word document.
But
Articles of the Federation established that the Articles of the Federation is the formal name for the Federation constitution, so the idea that their governing constitution is 109 articles long is just spooky. A layman could never understand the basic constitutional processes of his/her society with a length like that. A length like that reminds me of the
Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe -- which was rejected by most European Union voters in part because it was entirely too long.
The Charter of the United Nations has 111 Articles. That's just for one planet and one sentient species.
But it only has 19
chapters, which are the basic units of the Charter (which themselves are divided into articles).
But then, I see the source of my surprise: Because the Federation constitution is called the Articles of the Federation, I had assumed that an article was the largest division of text -- the equivalent to an article in the U.S. Constitution or to a chapter in the U.N. Charter.
If the articles are divisions of larger units, then I can easily see the Articles of the Federation being 109 articles long yet not be so long as to be difficult for a non-lawyer to understand -- the U.S. Constitution has around 73 separate sections (depending on how you count articles and amendments that are divided into multiple paragraphs covering different topics without being formally numbered into sections), if we count those instead of articles, for instance.
I suppose my nitpick then boils down to, "Should that be Section 109 instead of Article 109?" But, again, that's an incredibly minor piece of minutiae.
