>Does being in the Consitution of the United
>States (the wording is probably disordered) make it intrinsically good,
>ethical, virtuous, valuable, right, fair, just, and so on.
The US Constitution is a spiritual descendent of the Magna Carta. It is the bedrock 'agreement' against which all other laws must be measured for legitimacy. So in a certain sense, Catherine, yes, being in or conformant to the Constitution --and especially the Bill Of Rights, which specifies the limits of State power over individuals-- is more or less the defining characteristic of 'good, ethical, virtuous,...' law in the US.
Countries without a firm Constitution have absolutely no defence against anything the lawmaking body likes to do. In such countries, any law is ipso facto 'good', no matter how biased or hopeless on its face. In the US, grossly unfair laws generally get struck down by the Supreme Court as violating one of the Constitutional guarantees.
Of course, as many folk have pointed out, at the end of the day, the Constitutional guarantees mean only whatever the SC say they mean, which is why US leftists should pay a *lot* more attention to who gets to be President than they seem willing to do. The Reagan & Bush years particularly have given us a SC that is very willing to erode the Constitiution to create more wealth and privilege for the already- wealthy and -privileged. Those appointments, made by a senile B-film actor and a silver-spoon aristo, will go on turning the US into a 3rd-world country for a long time to come. Unless balanced by future appointments.
Anyway, yes, the Contitution and Bill Of Rights, flawed as they are, and open to circumvention-through- interpretation, are nevertheless the touchstone of goodness in the US legal system. They aren't perfect, but they're better than Whim du Jour.
=margaret