The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law

I get that the political system could be better, but having been to places that actually are not governed by the rule of law, I can assure you that the US is doing quite well on that front. When there is actually no rule of law, consequences include:

+ entire regions / areas where merely visiting those areas invites a highly non-trivial (think, more than 10% chance) chance of being kidnapped or murdered

+ every neighborhood and business has substantial, often military-grade private security

+ if credit exists at all, it exists outside of any formal banking structure and will have interest rates that are north of 30% APR, sometimes north of 100% APR. I've genuinely seen interest rates on credit as high as 2% *per day*, and these are rates that the local population is willing to pay for certain short term expenses (like food)

+ families that maintain good social relationships with the local police/militants/whoever-has-guns live substantially better lives than people without good social connections to the local authorities.

+ Travelers are told on repeat: "it's really not safe here for non-locals, you should stay inside and also reconsider being in this part of the world at all"

+ If the travelers are there for business reasons, they are probably assigned 24/7 armed guards (as many as 4 guards per traveler, each guard carrying full-auto weapons) by the locals, provided for free.

And while the US maybe has a neighborhood here or there which might be like this, every part of every major city in the country has more rule of law than the above.

You will never convince those who think the US is a state of lawlessness that the US is (mostly) a lawful, free and prosperous place. They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like. They've never experienced anything even remotely close to it. It's like someone who grew up in the tropics and complains that they're "freezing to death!" because it's 50F. Someone from the arctic tells them about what real cold is like... they literally cannot understand.

> They literally cannot comprehend what living in a corrupt and mostly lawless society is like.

I doubt that most Americans comprehend what is living in a well managed citizens-first country were people are represented and many laws are passed just because the working class wants them.

If you compare the USA with the worst places on earth, then it is a good place. I hope that Americans aim higher and want to compare themselves with the best places to live in the world.

What are those best places in the world?

I usually compare the US to Switzerland. I live in Boston, but was born in Lugano (southern tip of Switzerland).

Switzerland has an excellent quality of life, far better education system, remarkable stability, and amazingly good healthcare. The companies pay people well, give them adequate time off, and has 16+ weeks of maternity leave.

There are some pretty significant downsides in Switzerland, too. It's highly conservative, hard to make friends with the Swiss, and fairly expensive, depending on where you live.

We live in Boston because of family. It's a decent enough place to live, and from my perspective, just about the closest that the US gets to Europe.

I think Minnesota and Maine feel somewhat European in government.

I really wouldn't know. I haven't had any real exposure to either. I visited Maine once. It seemed nice.

What you describe is a goal we should absolutely strive for - and one we are clearly falling short of. At the same time it's foolish to describe the US as being on the opposite side of the spectrum. I dare say it's even dangerous, as it encourages a sense of hopelessness and disregard for laws and civility.

Rule of law is when the state's power is effectively limited by law.

Rule of law is not about order nor safety

Rule of law is when laws as written by legislators are executed by the government as written and, when appropriate, judged by the judiciary as written, and at each step the words as written supersede the whims and feelings of the people involved. It doesn't imply that the state can't do anything meaningful because it's so hamstrung.

Statements like "the US does not have the rule of law" are laughable Reddit-tier comments that just make me sad for the current state of HN.

The president and his cronies are openly immune to any recourse from the law at the moment. They are doing widespread and overt corruption and insider trading on a daily basis on scales that have never been seen in human history before. There is not any attempt at stopping that by any organ of government.

Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.

These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.

The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.

Mostly you should assess rule of law by threat to you and people you know and not by what it seems like other people are able to get away with.

Yes, a big part of the idea is that laws are meant to also apply to the powerful, but it's difficult to accurately assess situations that are far away from you.

What a nonsensical statement. From a distance it’s pretty clear that there is no rule of law anymore in the USA. Yes, it’s partially functioning, but that’s not the rule.

I dunno. How rich are you ? And do you happen to play college football ? That would help.

And do you drive a car? Car owners get a (relative) free pass because "accidents happen".

Do you work for ICE?

First they came for those that were far away from me and I did not speak out because… I didn’t know them?

It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals. All the while the abuses continue. How many years do you suppose we'll have to wait to see the Trump family subject to tax law?

> It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals.

Interesting. Again, how do you reconcile that theory with the with the large number of court cases involving Trump's specific actions that managed to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, leading to many clear rulings against Trump, all within the first year and a half of his current term?

That’s how the US got here in the first place. Not much of what the president and his friends and family are new to the US, now its more daring and freely talked about and normalized, like in a state where there’s no rule of law. You don’t need to be glued to doomscrolling to learn that a government is turning laws to punish terrorists inwards but you need to be glued to something to know its been in the making for over 20 years.

Excuse me. The law(14th Amendment section 3 specifically) clearly prohibited Trump from being eligible for federal office. That the Supreme Court abrograted state's rights to run elections free of federal interference, not to mention the lack of recusal given the blatant conflicts of interest, is a separate matter altogether.

> Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.

Is that your threshold for "rule of law"? And I'm sorry, but what separates ICE from a roving gang setting up shakedown checkpoints, and executing at point blank range with no repercussions dissenters?

> If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE.

This is such an outrageously privileged and out-of-touch statement. Maybe YOU wouldn't know about Trump and ICE if you didn't read the news, but that's your personal microcosm. Please be more mindful about damage and harm done when you're ascribing your personal worldview onto others' actual reality.

Define rule.

When the president can just pick the judges he wants and then have them change laws that have existed for decades on a whim, any kind of meaningful rule of law is absent.

Yeah and the US doesn't currently have that.

Low standards for you doesn't change the higher standards the US is designed to have. People voted very badly by not rejecting republicans. That does not mean those who did not should give up on restoring higher standards. States do have powers too.

When you can't trust your highest court is impartial the whole system is untrustworthy. Unfortunately the US system is designed in such a way that the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president).

Yes.

The emphasis is on “more” trusted.

Supreme court justice positions should be limited to around thirteen (or some other prime number) years and should have mandatory cognitive capacity tests given yearly that are videotaped and broadcast live. The tests should be written by a nonpartisan panel of doctors chosen randomly from an applicant pool like a jury and refreshed every five years.

Look at the UK for a much better system. It's got problems too but there's no concept of stacking the court in your favour because you were lucky enough someone died while you were in power.

Man while reading your points i was thinking your last sentence will be a sarcastic note that implies that these points all do actually apply to the US. Of course the US as a whole is not comparable to other parts of the world where these points absolutely apply but points 1,2,4 and 5 seem to apply to a significant extent.

My wife got lost in LA and ended up in Compton. (2 decades ago).

She absolutely had people tell her every fifteen minutes she was not safe there and several offered to wait with her while she ordered a taxi.

Except none of the taxis ever came so she had to take a bus and a guy came with her just to make sure she didn’t try getting off at the wrong stop.

The cops were dressed like SWAT with what looked like full autos (but may not have been) and very forcefully told her she should not be there.

this sounds like an absolutely wholesome story where multiple strangers donate their attention and time to help somebody who was not a victim in any way but just merely lost.

I wouldn't want my wife lost in Compton either but if the good guys outnumbered the bad guys by Inf% then it must not really be that bad. What would happen if it were Kinshasa instead of Compton.

and now 1000 sqft home in Compton is 600K

Ah yes, famously one of the worst neighborhoods in the country in that time. Yet she could still drive 10 miles and be perfectly safe

Point 1: I said "to an extent" but i concede that it is nowhere close to 10%, but isn't murder state law? The FBI does not step in for that or does it? And the homicide clearance rate has dropped to 50% (72% in 1980) in recent years, for half of the murder nobody is ever held accountable.

Point 2: I was thinking that the most heavily armed private citizenry counts as "private security". More guns than people. Also far more private security guards than cops. To me that is exactly what "private security everywhere" looks like.

Point 4: To be honest i think point 3 actually applies to any place anywhere. Someone who knows the local police gets away with far more shit in my small german village. But "doesn't apply to anyone who is white" clearly is a sign of lack of rule of law. Laws should be race-independent and statistics show that in the US it's anything but.

Point 5: No chaperone-level warnings, but the UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan all issue standing travel advisories about US gun violencem, the UK literally tells citizens "try not to walk through quieter areas alone, especially at night." And there were recommendations i got against business travel to the US especially with company issued equipment.

I mean, man, currently the US is not looking good from my point of view. I have a bunch of american friends who say immigration and everything else is ruining Germany. But looking at the stats it's looking quite okay:

Germany vs US: - Murder: 0.91 vs 5.7 per 100k

- Rape: 14 vs 40 per 100k

- Violent crime overall: 253 vs 380 per 100k

- Murder/homicide clearance: ~95% vs 50%

- Private security guard to police ratio: 0.9:1 vs 1.9:1

- Police killings: 10 vs 1100 per year

- Incarceration rate: 67 vs 600 per 100k

The highest incarceration rate in the developed world, ~4% of the world's population, ~25% of its prisoners. Are Americans just incredibly prone to being criminals? No. The crime rates above show the violent crime gap is ~1.5x, not 9x, and property crime is comparable or even lower than Germany's. ~95% of convictions are plea bargains extracted under threat of a "trial penalty", hundreds of thousands sit in jail pre-trial because they can't afford cash bail, and sentences run far longer for the same offenses. The US locks up 9x more people because it chooses to, not because Americans are more criminal. A state that imprisons its own population at Cuba and Rwanda rates while half its murders go unsolved, sells bail to the highest bidder, and runs on guilty pleas instead of trials. I would not correct anyone if they told me the US was not governed by the rule of law.

While there are things less than ideal in the US, this is absolutely not the case.

The "Rule of Law" applies to everybody, including the President (recent decisions of the supreme court not withstanding - though they are very unfortunate). You have provisions for the freedom of press, freedom of speech, to be free from unreasonable searches, a reliable court system, etc, etc.

Searches at the border are murky legal territory, and I think that there is a problem here. You may also argue that the president and senate have too much power, or that gerrymandering is a serious problem (which it is). But from these you cannot conclude a general lawlessness.

(I'm from North-Western Europe, living in the US for a few decades now, so I feel that I have at least some data to compare.)

A UN declared right is not legally binding in general AFAIK. Assuming I'm correct, your comment is non sequitur.

Not that I agree at all what happened.

It's governed by the wicked version of Anglo-Saxxon law.

In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.

In other cases, it's insanity.

In normal World, criminals have rights for any kind of defense. And that's good, because government have power to make anyone "criminal".

Total breach of privacy by US government is a mirror to shitload of problems US has.

Europe js heading same direction (both the problems & government solutions).

I think even by the second word you're outside bicycling, US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people.

> In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.

What on earth are you talking about, "victims" definitively have rights in most European countries, but the fact you seemingly think there is one "Continental law system in Europe" clearly shows you have zero idea what you're talking about, Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...

Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)

> US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people

> Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)

Right.

Who currently governs the US who isn't rich? Or do you disagree with that it's a bad idea that only rich people govern? I understand you want me to say nothing, that much is clear, but I don't understand what specific part you disagree with though.

> You should make this as your life credo. Change "sometimes" into "always" till you learn something.

Somewhat of a paradox no? I'm guessing your belief here is that I learned something by what you just told me, so me not saying until now when I read your comment, is exactly what you wanted?

> It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same. And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.

If you're under the belief that all countries in Europe have the same laws across borders because many countries have a civil law system, I'm not sure what to tell you, that's not how it works, and many countries have very different law systems, even if they come from the same origin. Neither would I say that countries "adopt EU legislation", but I guess that's a technicality. Usually you'd say that the countries implement their own laws based on the directives the European Commission comes up. But again, borderline nitpick, maybe better I don't mention this at all lest y'all get stuck on this particular point...

> This is not about US, this is about how World works.

Yeah, let me know when you understand how the entire world works friend ;) I won't claim to know that, although I do know home. But again, have fun, surely you'll get close! :)

6yo kids with average IQ can master Google SE.

Guess you'll never understand what is Continental law system. Or what is the meaning of word principle. Or what transposition is in terms of EU legislation.

Keep whining kiddo, that's the best proof that as always, your desperate attempt to portray yourself as someone knowledgeable, failed.

You can again give me one pathetic downvote ... that's your ultimate weapon. That will sure teach me a lesson for disrespecting big LLM gangsta with 96GB VRAM ... and all of sudden, crying for not being able to see tables in comments because all he has is mobile device.

Keep living your online fiction, slumdog millionaire.

> Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...

The Napoleonic Code is indeed pervasive across the continent. And, ignoring that, we have EU law, which is supra-statal law that most certainly and de facto has come to replace/impose on "local" laws.

https://lawshun.com/article/what-is-the-relationship-between... explains the complex relation between EU law and national law.

in a nutshell, EU law takes precedence over conflicting national laws in areas where the EU has competence.

While EU law is directly applicable or requires transposition into national law, member states retain autonomy in areas outside EU competence.

National courts are obligated to interpret domestic law in line with EU law.

National Constitutional Court/Supreme court, occasionally challenge EU law’s supremacy.

They can also just ignore it because the EU has no army, only economic retaliation is possible. Hungary did this for years.

> "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't"

Straw man argument. Everybody has rights in the EU, including people suspected of being criminals, and of course victims.

Arguing that in the EU victims have no rights is insulting for anyone reading your comment. That far-right view of the world is false and it is just trying to misinform and create hate.

> criminal's have rights, victims doesn't

Wait, you want to eliminate innocent until proven guilty?

This is the kind of comment that is considered informative and acceptable?

Also the legal system is not autistic. It's based on vibes more than anyone wants to admit.

Except that the UDHR is not the rule of law.

It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"

That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.

People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.

It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".

Not necessarily the same in every nation, but any treaty ratified by Congress in the United States has the same status as any law passed by Congress.

It is subject to judicial review, but has equal standing.

So the US cannot "violate [it] at will".

Sure it can, just like it can violate laws passed by Congress.

What country does not have a law against destruction of evidence? It seems like arresting a person for a law that most countries have is following the rule of law.

Evidence of what? Had a crime been charged when the search was undertaken? You can't just declare things evidence in order to get unfettered access to them.

at least not by universal human rights, apparently

At this point it is neither

Judges have been stopping hundreds of things Trump has tried to do.

Lower courts.

SCOTUS has overwhelmingly sided with the Administration. Not always, but quite often.

The US is currently governed by a dictator propped up by an oligarchy that can only do that because of the Citizens United supreme court decision. Until Citizens United is mitigated, and that appears to be starting to happen as states make laws that state you can't be on the ballot in their state if you take large, anonymous campaign donations from people who will want, and get, a return on their investment. Hawaii is either considering, or has passed just such a law. We don't even need a plurality of states to make similar laws, just the right ones. Look at a chart of campaign spending prior to, and following the Citizens United decision. Spoiler alert, it looks like a hockey stick standing upright.

An elected dictator with a nearing term limit. America continues to innovate!

One I belive has no intention of leaving office, and is trying to prevent the midterm elections from happening. Since the founding of the US, no elections have been delayed, or missed. Not once. Not during WWII, not after 9/11, never.

The failure that allowed trump to happen stems from one thing. Lack of imagination. The system in the US assumes that all of the politicians are at least attempting to argue in good faith. trump is more like a hurricane. he rolled in, fucked everthing up, and will roll out.

After November when the Democrat party has control of the upper and lower houses of congress, there are going to be investigations, grand jury indictments, and people will go to prison. They will also begin the work of closing some of the loopholes that were used to bypass how the government is supposed to operate.

Competitive authoritarianism is a closer term that IR people use.

Putin also had a nearing term limit, but he found a transparent way around it.

He didn't have "Putin next election year" merch for it, so I guess you can say this is innovation.

Citizens United is a scapegoat here. The people genuinely want what they voted for.

But the people generally seem to want whatever the person who spends the most money on media says they should want.

Harris rose over twice as much money as Trump in 2024.

Maybe you are right, and it's a scapegoat here. CU was and continues to be a disaster for this country, and I don't think enough attention can be brought to it until it is mitigated.

Was this arbitrary?

I'm not in the US, but say I was. I'm fully on board that the country is slowly (or not so slowly) drifting into becoming a fascist state. Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? What amount of taking responsibility, making decisions, taking action and gathering support is gonna help in that situation?

Technological workarounds which leave federal agents unable to search my phone isn't gonna fix the slide into fascism. But it might make my trip back home more comfortable. Activism against fascism isn't gonna make my trip back home more comfortable. But it might play a role in fighting the slide into fascism.

Hell, activist work to fight the slide into fascism might be the reason why I would rather not have my phone search by federal agents at the airport.

Individual problem require individual solutions, systemic problems require systemic solutions, and both kinds of solutions are valuable because both kinds of problems are real. Most people make the mistake of proposing individual solutions to systemic problems. You make the mistake of dismissing individual solutions to individual problems.

(I have also intentionally ignored here whether these solutions will actually work. I'm guessing some could, most would not. "I ran out of battery on my phone and didn't bring a laptop, sorry" would probably work. Some complicated cryptographic setup which "technically doesn't erase the data but leaves it inaccessible" probably wouldn't work; the federal agent wouldn't recognize the difference.)

> Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do?

Don't take your phone and/or other devices you don't want to have searched. It's the advice routinely given to those planning a trip from the rest of the world to the US.

That's another technical workaround. A good one, when possible, but it doesn't exactly fix fascism.

Fair enough. It's fine as long as people don't forget that fixing individual problems won't fix systematic problems; it would be like curing the symptoms, not the root cause.

If you want to beat fascism, use the fascists to beat it; not angry crying college kids who are openly loyal to Stalin.

That stunt ten years ago failed for a reason.

I have no idea why you are talking about Stalinist college kids all of a sudden.

I mean we have the 4th amendment here too. But there are exceptions for border control that have been upheld in court.

Why?

Because they haven’t entered the country yet, therefore it’s a different type of jurisdiction with different rules & regulations.

> the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for

What do you imagine the UN stands for? Let's not make the mistake of judging a program by its name or intention and not by its output. Mind you, this is the same UN on whose Human Rights Council sat such eminent proponents of human rights as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba.

Besides, the US historically funded about a third of the UN, out of 193 member states. It's farcical to suggest that the US is "actively hostile" to the thing that wouldn't even exist without its backing.

The UN stands for the UN charter - which the U.S. was a signatory of, of course - but from the 70’s onwards, US support for the UN waned to the point where we are today, where a withdrawal is not inconceivable.

As to what specifically the U.S. has opposed…

The Vienna convention. ICESCR. CEDAW. UNCLOS. Basel convention. Migrant workers convention. Convention on biodiversity. Convention on rights of the child (even North Korea signed this one, but the U.S. opposed it, still does). Comprehensive test ban treaty. Ottawa, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. Convention on cluster munitions. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (separate to the TBT). BBNJ/High seas treaty. Finally, the Paris agreement.

This isn’t even an exhaustive list. Just realised I forgot about the Rome statute and the ICC. Oh and the arms trade treaty. And the framework convention on climate change.

The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations. The U.S. views it as a blunt force instrument to use against others, but disregards its authority in almost all respects.

It’s even codified in the constitution, as passing a UN treaty requires a ⅔ majority of senators present, unlike any other type of legislation which just needs a legislative majority.

Finally, in January this year, the U.S. left 31 entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the HRC.

So, what part of reality is farcical to you?

> The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations.

It's not. It's mostly a U.S. institution. And those 31 entities that you mentioned are expensive and useless to Americans.

Fuck yes man, nuke the children.

Generally you can't carve out from a constitution, it is all encompassing. You can reinterpret perhaps but "carve outs" are only by amendment to the constitution. It's a concept called constitutional supremacy. There's generally ranking to laws. Think of a venn diagram with subset circles inside bigger circles.

Constitutional Law > Statutory/Legislative Law > Administrative/Regulatory Law > Case Law/Common Law

such documents are worth only as much as the population wants to, is willing to, and is able to enforce them.

Border searches aren't arbitrary when done for the purposes of border security and applied to travelers in a non-arbitrary way. It's pretty clear that CBP agents have a wide discretion to search people at their own whims i.e. arbitrarily.

>that the government does so lawfully

There are many legal question in this case, it's not clear the government acted lawfully. If he'd have arrived in a different federal court district, the search was unlawful because precedent says they need reasonable suspicion.

Not to mention this was a pretext to gather warrantless evidence for the FBI for a domestic investigation and nothing to do with securing the border.

>Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move

Not what he did.

>Not what he did.

Maybe "antagonise" isn't the right word (ESL). By tricking the border agent into wiping the device, you have made him annoyed / angry / look foolish etc. No matter how much you are in the right, you have now given this person, with the power to create a lot of problems for you, the motivation to do so. You have to weigh that against coming home to your wife and children, in time for dinner. That's not fair, but that's reality.

Or maybe you crossed the border, with the intent to create this situation, to get it tried in court. More power to you.

About five years ago, here in Denmark, the government decided that freedom of assembly no longer applied. An activist decided to hold a party for about 10 people, including his lawyer, called the police on himself, and live streamed the whole thing. I can't find whatever became of that case, because search engines can no longer search. His name is Lars Andersen. He's been jailed a lot of times for petty bullshit.

What fraction of travellers get their phones "randomly" searched for child porn specifically, as in this case?

What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.

> What relevance does that have here, though?

It is a moral statement, not a law.

The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.

The UDHR is full of statements that wouldn't even be agreed upon in a room full of people in the US, let alone around the whole world:

> The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Social progressives would strongly disagree.

> Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

Communists would strongly disagree.

> Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

Several UN member states that are absolute monarchies would strongly disagree.

We could go on and on. The UDHR is just a distillation of the postwar liberal consensus, voted on by only 58 countries back in 1948. Hardly the stuff that moral authorities are made of.

> > What relevance does that have here, though?

> It is a moral statement, not a law.

How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it?

Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.

So the UN discovers morality by counting votes of government representatives of a bunch of countries for a document that was drafted without their input? And this somehow means it's representative of morality?

What relevance does the common ground between countries have to morality? How does the common ground between Turkey and Greece, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and South Korea, China and Japan "discover" morality? Countries almost by definition don't have common ground, the closest they have is contested ground. People may have common ground, but it's somewhat fanciful to suggest that the representatives of the 18 countries who drafted the UDHR somehow was in any position to act as the moral representatives even for the 18 countries they represented.

They were some diplomats, probably all thoroughly immoral people if we somehow ever manage to figure out what the word moral actually meant, which I doubt.

Can you elaborate on this process as you understand it? I just can't quite wrap my head around this. To me, it seems that at best this process will result in something that exactly no person in the world would recognize as moral. A bit like Solomon's proposal to split the baby.

How do you define morality if you think the UN can discover it? Is there any way to check their work? Can I do a test to see if they made a mistake as I can with any other scientific disciple which discovers things about our world? Does their work make some prediction that we can actually check against reality to see if it's true or false?