united-states us-constitution separation-of-powers
How does the gridlock protect minorities?
<p>In <a href="https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0?t=392" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this video</a>, at 6:32, Justice Scalia was talking about the separation of powers.</p>
<p>In fact, the Bill of Rights was an afterthought, and the &quot;initial&quot; Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>That's because the framers thought the main protection for minorities would be the separation of powers.</p>
<p>In fact Justisce Scalia says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unless Americans can appreciate that, and learn ... learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the framers believed would be the main protection of minorities, the main protection: if a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority, they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this .... into this complex system</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What, in practical terms, would be the &quot;monkey wrench&quot; that is thrown in in order to stop a bill that really comes down on some minority?</p>
<p>Let's suppose that the majority of the people is Caucasian. For example, 80% of the people are Caucasian and 20% are Asians.</p>
<p>Let's further suppose, for example, that a bill is about to pass which says that the Asians pay all the taxes while the Caucasian pay no taxes.</p>
<p>Because 80% of the people are Caucasian, 80% of Congress is presumably elected by Caucasian people and reflect the will of Caucasian people.</p>
<p>The President is as well elected mostly by Caucasian people (at least assuming they are equally spread across the States).</p>
<p>How would the separation of powers, the gridlock, work out to stop this bill from passing?</p>

<p>In this context, Justice Scalia isn't talking about racial minorities. Instead, he is referencing the political theory of the Federalist Papers, which was concerned about &quot;factions&quot; some of which were minority factions, and some of which were majority factions, which the U.S. Constitution was devised to protect in different ways.</p>
<p>White Americans aren't now, and never have been in U.S. political history, a united front with a consensus agenda.</p>
<p>Legislative and policy making gridlock protects the status quo protections that minority factions (generally ideological and political rather than racial in this line of thinking) enjoy, against the &quot;tyranny of the majority.&quot;</p>
<p>The main minority that had been protected, in practice, by these practices have been rural whites, especially in the South, trying to protect their prerogatives in the status quo, against a political coalition of non-whites and Northern liberals. The classic example, for example, is the filibuster, which has largely been used by this faction of conservative whites to defeat civil rights legislation, until the last decade or two, when the filibuster started to be used frequently for purposes other than defeating civil rights legislation as well.</p>
