The technical experts responsible for the ground demarcation will have the authority to make minor adjustments in order to make the boundary alignment agree with the physical features as described.
The losses and gains to either country as a result of these adjustments with respect to the line marked on the map will be balanced by the technical experts. West Pakistan-Punjab border.
About 73 miles of the border has not yet been demarcated due to differences between the Governments of India and Pakistan regarding interpretation of the decision and Award of the Punjab Boundary Commission presented by Sir Cyril Radcliffe as Chairman of the Commission.
These differences have been settled along the lines given below in a spirit of accommodation: i The Sarja Marja, Rakh Hardit Singh and Pathanke Amritsar- Lahore border. Based on the type of discrimination alleged, the individual will first need to prove that the governing body actually discriminated against the individual.
The individual will need to prove that the governing body's action resulted in an actual harm to the individual. After proving this, the court will typically scrutinize the governmental action in one of several three ways to determine whether the governmental body's action is permissible: these three methods are referred to as strict scrutiny , intermediate scrutiny , and rational basis scrutiny.
The court will determine which scrutiny the individual will be subject to, relying on legal precedent to determine which level of scrutiny to use. It is important to note that courts have combined elements of two of the three tests to create an ad hoc test. Such responses are hardly surprising in view of the scant attention the matter has received.
The Supreme Court has had little to say on the subject, and no pronouncements seem likely in the foreseeable future. Limitations on the subject matter of constitutional amendments have seldom been debated in Congress or the state legislatures.
And constitutional scholars, who might be expected to have the strongest interest in the matter, have, at least in recent years, left the issue largely untouched. It might be suggested that there is a good reason for such unconcern over what limitations exist on the subject matter of constitutional amendments: that the issue is unimportant.
But such a suggestion is wrong. Exploration of the reach of the amending power is more than mere indulgence in a brainteaser; it is an inquiry that can give us much insight into the way we think about our Constitution. When we answer the question as to what we can never do constitutionally, we have gone a long way toward clarifying the American conception of constitutionalism.
Although it is generally assumed today that constitutions are amendable, such was not always the case. At one time, most foreign constitutions and a number of state constitutions failed to include any provision for their amendment.
In fact, it has been said that the idea of incorporating within a constitution a provision for its own amendment was largely an invention of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Article five of the United States Constitution, establishing the procedures by which future alterations to the Constitution are to be made, is more remarkable for its existence than for any limitation it imposes on the subject matter of amendments. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention believed that an article providing for amendments to the Constitution was desirable for two reasons.
First, the men assembled in Philadelphia were under no illusions that the constitutional scheme they were struggling to establish was perfect for present circumstances, much less perfect for the future generations of Americans that they hoped would live under it. Second, they believed that a flexible constitution would provide the protection needed by a young and somewhat fragile government against revolutionary upheavals.
As one delegate said, "The novelty and difficulty of the experiment requires periodical revision. The prospect of such a revision would also give intermediate stability to the Government. The process by which amendments to the Constitution were to be made occupied relatively little of the delegates' time in the early sessions of the Convention. On July 23, , the Convention unanimously agreed to a resolution "that provision ought to be made for the amendment of the articles of the union, whensoever it shall seem necessary.
There was no indication in the early debates that any provisions in the constitution would not be subject to amendment. The committee's draft of an article pertaining to the amendment process was not taken up until the closing days of the Convention. When it finally did become the focus of the delegates' attention on September 10, , a sharp disagreement surfaced.
Some delegates feared that the committee's proposal, providing simply that Congress call a convention for the purpose of amending the Constitution when it is requested to do so by two-thirds of the states, made the amendment process too easy.
Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, expressed concern that the committee proposal would result in amendments expanding Federal powers at the expense of state powers, and over the objections of as many as one-third of the states. Other delegates, including Alexander Hamilton, had a different fear: that the committee proposal would make the Constitution unduly rigid.
Hamilton thought the proposal was deficient in that it failed to empower Congress to call a convention on its own? The states, he said, will apply for alterations only if it will increase their own powers, whereas the national legislature will be the first to perceive, and will be most sensitive to, the need for amendments.
With the committee proposal being attacked as making the amendment process both too easy and too difficult, it is fortunate that there was a James Madison in attendance who was able to offer a proposal that both sides found reasonably satisfactory. Madison's substitute proposal addressed the biggest concern of those who feared subversion of the states by providing that no amendment approved by a convention would become a valid part of the constitution until ratified by three-fourths of the legislatures of the several states.
Hamilton's fear that states would only apply for self-serving amendments was lessened by Madison's proposal that Congress, upon a vote of two-thirds of the members of both Houses, be allowed to propose amendments. Only after general agreement was reached on the nature of the amendment process was it suggested that the amendment power should be limited in any way as to subject matter. John Rutledge, a delegate from South Carolina, announced that he could not support a document that potentially gave nonslave states the power to amend provisions of the Constitution that denied to the national government the power to prohibit or tax the slave trade.
Rutledge's demand was acceded to in part by the Convention, which agreed to add a proviso to article five prohibiting any amendment prior to which "shall in any manner affect" the provisions of the Constitution relating to slaves. In making this concession to South Carolina and Georgia, the recent and highly emotional debates between representatives from northern and southern states on the slave issue loomed large in the minds of delegates.
The hope was expressed that after twenty years, the subject might be reconsidered with less difficulty and greater coolness. On the last business session of the Philadelphia Convention, September 15, , the subject of the amendment process came up again.
Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman voiced his fear that the Constitution as proposed would allow three-fourths of the states to take actions that would be fatal to particular states, such as abolishing them altogether or depriving them of their equal suffrage in the Senate.
In an effort to prevent that from happening, Sherman made a series of motions. His motion to amend the proposed article to provide that no amendment would become effective until it had been ratified by all of the states failed, with three states voting for it and seven against it. Sherman's next motion, to prohibit any amendment without the consent of the state, that would affect it in "its internal police" or deprive it of its equal suffrage in the Senate, also failed, this time by a vote of eight to three.
Sherman persisted. His next motion was drastic: to strike the entire article relating to amendments and thus make the entire Constitution unamendable. Not surprisingly, this motion was also soundly defeated. Finally, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania made the motion that was to result in another proviso being added to article five of the Constitution.
Morris argued that the provision guaranteeing to each state equal suffrage in the Senate should not be subject to amendment. Along with the slave issue, the composition of the Congress had been one of the most divisive issues debated that summer in Philadelphia; a compromise had emerged from seemingly irreconcilable differences. No one wanted to jeopardize what had been accomplished. Madison described what happened: "[T]his motion, being dictated by the circulating murmurs of the small states, was agreed to without debate, no one opposing it, or on the question, saying no.
The words of the Constitution itself would seem to dispel any doubt as to whether there exists a limitation on the subject matter of amendments. They have not. Despite the fact that article five expressly provides that no amendment shall deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate, it has been suggested that the provision is "merely declaratory. One argument denying the ultimate validity of subject matter limitations on power of amendment is grounded in the belief that it is in the people-not in some document- that the sovereign power resides.
Words in the Constitution that purport to impose limitations on what is amendable, the argument runs, represent an attempt to bind the "will of the people" and may be ignored by a judge or a legislator considering an amendment of the sort prohibited by the Constitution's own terms.
In a sense, the will of the people cannot be bound. If "will of the people" means the position supported by an overwhelming preponderance of the political forces in a society and not simply the view supported by a majority of society's members, then it is almost inevitable that the law will eventually come to reflect the will of the people.
To accept as a political fact-of-life the long-run triumph of dominant social forces is not, however, necessarily to agree that the conscientious judge or legislator should heed demands to ignore the clear words of the Constitution. Yet acceptance of the so-called "social theory of law" does raise a question: if it is nearly inevitable that a given point of view will become the law, regardless of whether a few judges temporarily prevent that from happening, would it not be better if the change were allowed to occur in the way least threatening to our values and institutions?
The problems associated with alternative means of effectuating a constitutional change may well provide the best justification for not giving effect to a limitation on the subject matter of amendments. Put most strongly, an effort to enforce such a limitation could endanger the stability of the republic. If change of the law must be accomplished through the drafting of a new constitution, the possibility exists that an insensitive or shortsighted majority may cast aside constitutional protections for states' rights and individual liberties, thereby increasing the risk that dissatisfied minorities will resort to force to achieve their objectives.
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