

The U.S. Needs a Constitution – Here's How to Write It - hk__2
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-us-needs-a-constitution-heres-how-to-write-it/281090/

======
VaedaStrike
The self-assured certainty imbedded in the tone of this article belies the
pride manifest in such a view that prefers the novel application of modern
intellectual enlightenment to the time tested bulwark that is our iterative
and flexible legal foundation.

The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a
systemic/endemic flaws is telling of a mentality similar to seeing children as
inconvenient drains on environmental integrity or child-birth as merely some
destructive medical condition from which women should be spared any time such
is possible.

This kind of pride and double guessing of the 'anti-fragile' system that is
emergent from the US Constitution is the very thinking that's going to cause
more problems for our nation than the forward thinking policies of the
Greenspan era that gave us snapshots of prosperity through propping
intellectual ideas RATHER than promoting true progress as it comes with all
it's warts and growing pains.

You don't win the future by throwing what's survived into the trash bin on
account that it's not pretty or efficient enough for your liking or your
intellectual enlightenment.

~~~
maratd
> The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a
> systemic/endemic flaws is telling

Indeed.

One of the greatest strengths of the US Constitution, one of the reasons it is
the oldest constitution in use to date, is the fact that it stemies
government.

That _dysfunction_ is what has led to the extraordinary prosperity experienced
by the United States.

~~~
halostatue
That’s a nice axiomatic assumption made based on faulty observations.

Not only are the facts to support that assumption not in evidence, the facts
that exist about the history of the U.S. government show that

(a) dysfunction is not the normal mode of operation of the U.S. government and
that

(b) the extraordinary prosperity of the U.S. since about 1930 has been to
increasing levels of federal government involvement and investment in both
infrastructure projects (e.g., the interstate highway system, the Internet,
advances in medicine and sanitation) and social projects (the social safety
net, some basic medicare services, education investment as a whole,
desegregation and civil rights in general).

The U.S. has not been this actively dysfunctional for at least eighty years,
and more likely for about 160 years (and the secondary reasons for the
dysfunction 160 years ago are not too dissimilar to the reasons for
dysfunction now, as ways of life and economic growth are deeply threatened by
modernization). I’m not sure that we've seen sustained partisanship for this
long _ever_ in the history of the U.S. (about 18 years since Bill Clinton and
Newt Gingrich’s clashes in ’95).

Further, it’s questionable how sustainable the “prosperity” in the U.S. is
over the 18–20 years, as has been well documented. Most of the money has
flowed away from the middle class (the proverbial rising tide) and toward an
already wealthy upper-upper class.

That the U.S. and its constitution have survived several shorter periods of
hyper-partisanship and a civil war suggest that it is, as a document, more
resilient than the article suggests, but there has been a sea change in the
U.S. where I no longer recognize the country of my birth and can foresee the
day when I choose no longer to be a U.S. citizen because I no longer identify
with what it has become.

~~~
VaedaStrike
RE your point a)

this gets into the semantics of the term dysfunction. I think if we did a
point by point walk through of any given portion of the history of US
government one could find a bounty of examples of dysfunction. It would simply
be a matter of choosing what portions of history you wished to look closely
at.

and RE your point b)

This is a far bigger set of assumptions and faulty observations. Firstly not
all of those projects constitute a singular 'success' rather than simply the
emergent of some system that produces a wide range of results. The funding is
simply a component of that and the ultimate determining factor as to whether
or not the net result of that funding was better than other alternatives that
could have existed in it's absence is something that's not easy to quickly
determine.

Reminds me of getting a large and extremely demanding client. Certainly one
may be gaining far more money than they ever did prior to having said client,
but if the demands and side effects of having the client are too high then
even the masses of money one makes, when placed in context to the big picture
and the actual desired ends, may not result in an optimal, or even a positive,
end.

One needs but look at state welfare in Europe to see an example of this. The
state takes care of people and one of the fall outs is that individual
persons, beyond what they are obligated to give through taxation, help their
fellow countrymen at far lower rates than they do in less socialized nations.
There's always unseen costs.

~~~
halostatue
Are you seriously going to try to make either of these arguments?

a. Your original point suggested that continuous dysfunction is the reason
that the U.S. is successful. Not only is this nonsensical, it is ahistorical.
Yes, the U.S. has had periods of hyper-partisanship prior to the last fifteen
years. The most serious of these resulted in a war. However, over most of the
last 224 years, the U.S. has had more periods of cooperation and compromise
than hyper-partisanship and dysfunction. Even during the 1930s (where there a
plot to stage a coup d'état, defeated only because the plotters misjudged
their preferred candidate) and the 1950s (e.g., McCarthy) the business of
government moved forward and there were measurable improvements in the quality
of life and infrastructure directly attributable to government intervention.
(See also the TVA.)

b. Your assessment is flat-out incorrect on numerous levels. Again, it assumes
facts that are not only not in evidence, but contrary to the facts that
actually exist. This is a common problem with choosing to believe ideological
stances rather than comparing them against facts.

Under no circumstances do I think that all government programs are successful;
however, the U.S. saw greater _real_ economic growth during times of higher
government spending on infrastructure programs and social programs (as I
indicated) than it has when these things fall to the best “interests” of the
monied classes and so-called “Christian charity”.

I don’t know what your particular political stance is, but your
characterization of the charitable nature of Europeans is misguided, at best—a
lot of the higher “charitable” donation rates in the U.S. are because (1) the
government funds _aren’t_ there to assist those in need, (2) there are greater
tax incentives to donate more. I put “charitable” in quotes because all
donations to churches—for any reason whatsoever—are considered tax deductible
in the U.S. Most of those donations are _not_ used for local charitable
assistance (e.g., soup kitchens, etc.) activities; they are used for church
building maintenance, salaries, mission work, etc.

I _suspect_ (because I don’t know where to find the actual numbers for this)
that if you were to measure per-capita charitable assistance spending through
charitable donations, it would be similar. I also don't happen to think that
the success of a nation should be measured on how financially charitable its
people are to those less fortunate members of society—I think it should be
measured on how few of its people have what is now termed food insecurity. If
that can be done with charitable donations, great—but as the U.S. amply
demonstrates, it cannot _and never could_.

------
alex-g
In my view, the US Constitution has been _too_ successful. If it were more
definitively broken, it could be repaired more easily. But there is no
political will right now to make any amendments at all, outside of noodling on
the Internet and in wonkish circles. As it is, the longevity of the
Constitution has led to its being imbued with an almost mystical character,
where it's viewed as the most important force preventing anarchy and/or
tyranny, and as something incredibly fragile.

~~~
bmelton
I disagree. The failure of the Constitution is pretty broad and varied, but
its failures have definitely been apparent to those who know it and are paying
attention.

Separation of powers has effectively failed due to the Supreme Court's supreme
reliance on precedent, or stare decisis. One bad decision, unless explicitly
overturned, has ripple effects on every decision that follows it. Because of
SCOTUS' strict adherence to precedent, and their relative unwillingness to
overturn bad law except where they absolutely, positively have to, we have a
ton of bad precedent on the books, and everybody pussyfoots around them, which
leaves more and more resultant bad decisions in their wake.

The second amendment has been as flagrantly violated for years as the fourth
is now. "Congress shall make no law" is obscured by endless debate over
whether the right belongs to a militia, or whether it is an individual right.
After the Heller decision, that debate has shifted over to whether or not a
given piece of legislation is "reasonable", as the Heller decision declared
legislation must be. This of course ignores the text of the Constitution, that
Congress shall make no law, but because they have made laws, and some of those
laws have been upheld by bad precedent, we have a circular logic in place.
Congress shall make no law, but the last law that was made was upheld, so no
laws can be made, so long as they are reasonable. Further, SCOTUS has thus far
passed on newer, more updated challenges in the wake of Heller.

They've made the same side-steps on gay marriage. A favorable decision has
been reached, but there's no teeth in place to prevent states from re-
interpreting the decision however they like, and everything moves so slowly
that political parties can reap the rewards from both the passage of a bad
law, and its repeal. The democrats passed DOMA, to great acclaim. The
democrats claimed success when DOMA was overturned, to great acclaim. The
Constitution's purpose is to prevent legislation from catering to the whims of
the people, and it is clearly not doing a great job there.

It's hard to imagine that any originalist text or intent would condone today's
perennial slaughter of the fourth amendment, but on it goes. People stake
their claims on individual words in the clause, while ignoring the text on the
whole. This is done on purpose, because there is no penalty for violating the
Constitution, and because even if we were to attempt to hold those accountable
to the text, it's so easy to say "Well, I read it differently."

The problem is that the Constitution, for as much as we might all love it in
theory, is written in plain English, and is subject to interpretation by
lawyers. There's a reason lawyerese is used, and it's to prevent plain English
readings from being interpretable. But we elect those who are, for better or
worse, the most likely to be able to twist its words into meaning whatever we
want, and we either can't, or don't hold them accountable for anything above
and beyond the next election cycle.

Sorry for the rant.

~~~
saraid216
> The second amendment has been as flagrantly violated for years as the fourth
> is now. "Congress shall make no law" is obscured by endless debate over
> whether the right belongs to a militia, or whether it is an individual
> right.

The text of the Second Amendment isn't "Congress shall make no law". It's that
"the right ... shall not be infringed." The "shall make no law" bit refers to
the First Amendment.

This seems to be relevant for the rest of your thing about how bad laws were
made...

> It's hard to imagine that any originalist text or intent would condone

You seem to be saying this as if originalism is the absolute correct
jurisprudential theory with which to interpret the Constitution, but to put it
mildly, that's debatable.

> The problem is that the Constitution, for as much as we might all love it in
> theory, is written in plain English, and is subject to interpretation by
> lawyers.

It's subject to interpretation by the rest of us, too. Which is why it annoys
the hell out of me every time someone talks about how they wish people would
just use plain English instead.

> There's a reason lawyerese is used, and it's to prevent plain English
> readings from being interpretable.

This isn't correct. Lawyerese is used because the phrases have established
precedent. It's not un-interpretable; it's already-was-interpreted and you're
going to have to overturn precedent in order to get it interpreted
differently.

~~~
bmelton
Apologies for the errors. I was (unwisely) posting under the influence at the
time.

You're absolutely right on the Second, and I know that well myself... I think
I'd started saying something about the first and fourth and gotten mixed up.
It was indeed a rookie mistake, and I appreciate your correction.

As for the originalist interpretation of the Constitution, I know that it's
been debated, but I've never subscribed to the arguments that an originalist
reading is bad. If you don't like the Constitution as it is, and enough people
agree that it's wrong, then ratification is your course. Pretending it doesn't
say what you don't want it to should not be an option.

That isn't to suggest that I think it's perfect. I think that it should have
been, and should be ratified far more than it has been. I think that there's
plenty wrong with it, but just acting like it doesn't exist shouldn't be an
option either, and that seems to be the trend.

The last thing I'll say on originalism though is that the Supreme Court is
_supposed_ to attempt to interpret the Constitution as written with the help
of other supporting texts of the day, ala the Federalist, Hamilton's papers,
etc., to adhere to originalist intent. As such, I think it's fair to say that
an originalist interpretation is the gold standard, and we're falling far
short of that mark.

In keeping with that though, I believe the founders foresaw its shortcomings,
and also expected more ratification.

I don't disagree with your assessment on plain English, but I do wish that
there was less ambiguity.

~~~
saraid216
ETA: I feel like this comment was sort of combative and harsh. I'm not really
sure how to ameliorate that, though, so I'm just going to prepend an apology
and say thank you for being more polite than me beforehand. :P

> If you don't like the Constitution as it is, and enough people agree that
> it's wrong, then ratification is your course. Pretending it doesn't say what
> you don't want it to should not be an option.

But this is true of _all_ jurisprudential theories, not only of originalism.
That's why people campaign to get bills passed, but merely sit around and
cross their fingers when court decisions are made.

> the Supreme Court is supposed to attempt to interpret the Constitution as
> written with the help of other supporting texts of the day, ala the
> Federalist, Hamilton's papers, etc. to adhere to originalist intent.

This is completely untrue: you're making up requirements in order to support
originalism. It's like saying that houses are _supposed_ to be tall and dot
the landscape, and therefore should always be built aboveground. Originalism
is an interpretative tradition _like any other interpretative tradition_. It
doesn't have a special place. You can favor it, but that's a personal
inclination, and not actually justified.

[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interp....](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interp.html)
(Posner is one of judiciary voices calling for IP reform.)

[http://www.constitution.org/cons/prin_cons.htm](http://www.constitution.org/cons/prin_cons.htm)
(Especially #17)

~~~
bmelton
No worries on tone. I do my level best to always assume good faith, and temper
that with the knowledge that smart, reasonable people often disagree very
loudly. ;-)

As for my statement on originalism, I don't believe it untrue, but I do
believe it was poorly stated. The two basic schools of thought express the
judiciary requirement to either pay heed to _original intent_ or _original
meaning_ , with perhaps strict constructionism coloring either side of the
equation.

Regardless, I think that my intent remains true, which is that politicians too
often disregard both the original meaning, the original intent, or any strict
or loose construction of the Constitution in order to bend the Constitution,
through verbal gymnastics, into abstractly supporting whatever thing it is
that they want supported.

In short, it is simply disregarded, and if a Constitutional challenge is
posed, it is easily circumvented by hand-waving and word play. This, despite
the primary job of the federal government (IMO at least) is to uphold the
Constitution, and every member of the legislature, executive and judiciary
having sworn an oath to uphold it.

------
austinz
This will never happen until the significant part of the population that
considers the Constitution de facto divine writ is disabused of that notion.
It's the same notion that gives rise to some of the more odious forms of
American exceptionalism and encourages a firewall between ideological and
academic views of that document.

~~~
VaedaStrike
It's pride that produces the odious forms of American exceptionalism, not the
view that the Constitution is divine writ.

Why, praytell, would you prefer the academics give us a replacement? What
great thing have the academics gotten right that would have us change such a
document outside the conditions it sets forth as being requisite for such
change?

~~~
austinz
I never said (or implied) that I prefer the academics give us a replacement.
And neither I nor the article claim that the Constitution should be changed or
discarded using extralegal means. Your response, in contrast, is exactly the
sort of knee-jerk thought-terminating shoutdown response I was alluding to.

~~~
VaedaStrike
I must have mistaken your contrasting academic and ideological as an implicit
preference to the academic over the ideological, I did that simply because I
presumed that you were against the ideological.

While I concede the point on not doing it in an extralegal means, I was wrong
technically, I have a hard time reading the points in the articles and seeing
how the foundational elements, such as a balance of powers, are preserved in
what's put forward. From extending presidents and vice-presidents beyond their
terms into 'guardians' seems to presuppose that such wasn't thought of by the
founders, or that the solution they gave us (in this case the SCOTUS) isn't
working.

So my issue is that the items that are being proposed are, in many instances,
aimed at compromising key, and functioning, and often best of class,
principles.

Again I put forward the item at the end where it mentions the example of the
Articles of Confederation being completely scrapped. We are under some
illusion that humanity has changed more than it really has. Much of the core
components of the Constitution have not become irrelevant.

Even the point in the article where it mentions that the US has the least
generic constitution, as if that were indicative of efficacy or the optimal.
Certainly there's room for improvement, but to change the fundamentals, and in
such sweeping ways, is really not advisable.

~~~
austinz
Sure, I think what you say is reasonable. I don't know how much I like the
ideas in this article to be honest, and I'm not really qualified to judge
them. I do like the fact that people are throwing out ideas and discussing
them, even if they're not good ideas.

~~~
VaedaStrike
I'll give you a hearty amen on the virtue of throwing out ideas.

------
ams6110
We don't need a new Constitution. The one we have isn't working only to the
extent that the size and scope of the federal government is far larger than it
should be. We need a new federal government. The Constitution is fine.

~~~
incompatible
A new federal government would require control by somebody other than
Democrats and Republicans, otherwise it's just more of the same. However the
US system of elections makes it very difficult to escape from a two party
system.

As for size and scope of the federal government, that's surely been decided by
elected representatives according to the procedures of the constitution?

~~~
gcv
An amendment eliminating the Electoral College would go a long way towards
fixing the problems outlined in TFA. The Constitution is largely very good,
but it unintentionally created a de-facto two party system. With the executive
branch free from that sort of nonsense, it may be that the legislature will
right itself.

~~~
dragonwriter
> An amendment eliminating the Electoral College would go a long way towards
> fixing the problems outlined in TFA.

No, it wouldn't.

> The Constitution is largely very good, but it unintentionally created a de-
> facto two party system. With the executive branch free from that sort of
> nonsense, it may be that the legislature will right itself.

Not really; the EC isn't the key feature of the electoral system that produces
a two party system, and the features that are -- the fact that most elections,
and particularly those for the Congress, are by plurality or majority-runoff
methods -- is nowhere in the Constitution, but is the product of statute (and,
largely, _state_ statutes.)

~~~
gcv
Fair point. How about an additional amendment spelling out an alternative
method for elections to the legislative branch? Do away with plurality and
introduce enumerated preferences?

~~~
dragonwriter
Personally, I'd prefer _no_ federal Constitutional amendments on the issue,
and eliminating the federal statutory barriers to candidate-centered
proportional representation, and then letting states try different approaches
using preference voting, both in single and multimember districts, before
imposing a specific uniform national approach as a Constitutional requirement.

First, because its a lot easier to _achieve_ politically, and second, because
while I've got pretty clear ideas of both the legislative and executive
approaches _I_ think would be best, I don't think its a big enough change that
there is plenty of reason to be cautious in imposing a uniform national
mandatory rule.

------
callil
There is a paradox in this article. If the politicians who are re-writing the
constitution come from inside a dysfunctional system, how will they be able to
ever come to a consensus?

~~~
saraid216
Sorry, why are we leaving it to the politicians again?

~~~
VaedaStrike
If you have a democratic system of any kind with any degree or option of
delegation there are always politicians. They may have different titles, but
they are essentially the same thing.

~~~
saraid216
Then we all need to become politicians. I find this to be a reasonable thing
to strive for.

------
gcv
Constitutions are wonderful things, and they can help set the tone of a
nation. Yet, everything comes down to the people: the rulers and the public.
As long as the rulers behave decently, things work well. When they don't,
things fall apart. The Soviet Union had the most democratic constitution ever
— and it meant nothing. The people "in charge" in the US have decided to
behave like swine, on everything from ignoring swathes of the Bill of Rights
to not talking to each other about policy. No amount of Constitutional
rewriting will help with that.

To use an analogy near and dear to the HN readership: you can use the best
language, framework, and source control system, but that won't help if you
have incompetent programmers who do not communicate.

~~~
gametheoretic
Oh, c'mon - you're almost there. Your analogy is begging you to take it a step
further. Law, code. How good are human beings at writing massive rules-systems
which avoid conflicting logic?

~~~
saraid216
Not sure what amuses me more. The notion of citizen as end user, or the notion
of lawyer as API consumer.

------
tunesmith
The problem is how to get to there from here. I'm not sure that the
Constitutional Convention is possible.

The national popular vote might be possible. The electoral college was
originally put in place to protect states' regional interests (via the extra
two electoral votes per state). But the impact of those two votes was supposed
to degrade over time, as the House (one EV per rep) was supposed to continue
growing as population grew. If that had been allowed to continue growing, the
Electoral College results would be virtually identical to the national popular
vote by now. (Gore's EV total would have exceeded Bush's, for example.) If you
get enough states to say they'll award their EVs to the national popular vote
winner, as soon as 270 EVs worth of states agree to the same thing, then
blammo - the Electoral College (as we know it) is kaput.

Once a national popular vote is in place, it would be easier to start
considering things like national proportional representation, rather than the
plurality system we have now. As it is, the electoral college kind of bakes
plurality into the system.

One thing I'm still not sure of though - does proportional representation
really improve anything? Wouldn't it basically result in political battles
that would otherwise be settled in the primaries? You could basically look at
the Tea Party and the Republicans as a ruling coalition in the house right
now, and the battles between those two factions look pretty ridiculous. In
proportional representation, it'd just mean there might be more of them (due
to the spoiler effect of Democrats defeating Tea Party candidates after Tea
Party candidates beat Republicans in primaries).

There's also a reflexive bias towards IRV in the analysis. Ranked ballots are
great, but that counting system is more trouble than it's worth.

~~~
saraid216
Well, one of the biggest problems is that we have no idea what "there"
actually looks like.

------
jacques_chester
Australia has profited enormously from the US Constitution.

Our own Constitution was drafted in the wake of the American Civil War and
with observations gleaned from decades of US politics. Take for example
section 55 of our Constitution: it requires a tax Act to _only_ deal with
taxation, and only with _one tax subject_. This makes rider clauses flatly
impossible.

Similarly, when we held a referendum to become a republic, the model proposed
deliberately _avoided_ introducing an elected President as it was seen as
introducing a new and destabilising power base that would eventually lead to a
constitutional crisis.

Still. I don't think that the tide of crisis in the US has risen sufficiently
high to trigger a mood for amendment, especially given the quasi-religious
lionisation of the drafters of the US Constitution. They were intelligent men
solving a problem, not prophets. Frankly I think a lot of them would be
calling for amendments in order to solve the unforeseen dynamics that have
subsequently emerged.

Settle in, there's going to more of the same in decades to come. There is a
lot of ruin in a nation, as Smith observed, and the USA is the wealthiest and
most powerful nation in history.

~~~
npsimons
_Australia has profited enormously from the US Constitution.

Our own Constitution was drafted in the wake of the American Civil War and
with observations gleaned from decades of US politics._

If you read the Federalist Papers, it's interesting to note how much of
history (going back to the ancients, ie Sparta, Athens, etc) the writers of
the US constitution studied. That's not to say that they were perfect (I try
not to hero worship myself; it often leads either to disappointment or
distortions), but it's also nice to see the whole "learn from history"
aphorism put into practice.

~~~
dragonwriter
The Federalist Papers were written after the Constitution -- they were
political ads for the campaign for ratification.

~~~
npsimons
Oops, my bad; corrected.

EDIT: While I will agree that the Federalist Papers were strong rhetoric, and
I can think of examples that contradict many of the axioms of them, I also
believe it is very enlightening to read them because they reveal how much the
framers of the US constitution had studied of other governments.

~~~
jacques_chester
They were also familiar with the concepts and theories that had not long
before been published in France by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot and others.

Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened in
the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer of
property and no wholesale breakdown of social order. It was a struggle of a
local elite against a remote elite. He exclusively uses "War of Independence"
in his historical writing.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened
> in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer
> of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order.

While they sometimes coincide, _political_ , _social_ , and _economic_
revolutions are really separate things; the absence of the elements identified
doesn't really say anything about whether or not it was a political
revolution.

------
saraid216
So, because the comments here are busy fighting over patriotism and tone
rather than the substance of the article, here's a list of salient bits:

> When 24 military officers and civilians were given a single week to craft a
> constitution for occupied Japan in 1946, they turned to England. The
> Westminster-style parliament they installed in Tokyo, like its British
> forebear, has two houses. But unlike Congress, one is clearly more powerful
> than the other and can override the less powerful one during an impasse.

> "No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive
> and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of
> the people," Linz wrote.

> Most parliamentary systems, which unify the executive and legislative
> branches, have this sort of fail-safe mechanism. If a budget or other must-
> pass bill can't get passed, or a prime minister can't be chosen, then
> funding levels are placed on autopilot and new elections are called to
> resolve things. The people decide.

> The Senate, he says, should be expanded to give more populous states at
> least a bit more representation, and it should also include "national
> senators"—all former presidents and vice presidents, maybe others—whose job
> it is to guard national interests over parochial ones. Sabato's plan would
> also double the size of the House (to make representatives closer to the
> people) and enforces a nonpartisan redistricting process to end
> gerrymandering. Elections for president, Senate, and House, in Sabato's
> vision, are rescheduled to coincide more often, while presidents would serve
> a single, six-year term (the idea is to make their governing less political,
> while giving them enough time to implement change).

> Instead, Lessig, along with fellow Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and
> many others, proposes a bottom-up form of public financing where voters get
> a voucher of, say, $50 off their taxes, which they can use to donate to
> candidates.

> If Americans managed to convoke a constitutional convention, they could draw
> on hundreds of possible tweaks with text already written, available online
> thanks to the Google-funded Comparative Constitutions Project. After
> hundreds of tries, we (humans) have gotten so good at chartering governments
> that we've developed a set of best practices.

> instant-runoff voting has become increasingly popular because it allows
> voters to rank multiple choices instead of picking just one.

> Germany's Pirate Party advocates something called "liquid democracy." A
> cross between New England-style town meetings and Facebook, this model of
> delegative democracy leverages social relationships and expertise on an
> open-source software platform for collaborative decision-making.

> Clay Shirky, a futurist at New York University, advocated for a "distributed
> version control democracy" in a recent TED talk. The New York state
> Legislature is already experimenting with this on its OpenLegislation
> platform, while the OpenGov Foundation, a nonprofit organization cofounded
> by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is doing something similar on the federal
> level, allowing anyone to comment on and annotate legislation pending before
> the House.

~~~
rayiner
I love the "liquid democracy" bit. Sounds like a Silicon Valley startup pitch.
Catchy name, tons of buzzwords, and totally incomprehensible.

~~~
andrewfong
It's pretty simple actually. Imagine direct democracy, but with the option to
delegate your vote to someone else, who can delegate their votes to another
person, and so on. At the end of the day, the major powers aren't based on
traditional parties but on layers of delegation.

The obvious danger here is its tension with the secret ballot. Currently, your
boss can put all sorts of pressure on you to vote a particular way (even if it
is illegal), but he ultimately can't step into the voting both with you. In
contrast, with "liquid democracy", the chain of delegation may afford all
sorts of ways to decide how someone "voted".

~~~
gametheoretic
Aside: Compare and contrast the results of nation-state democracy before and
after mandatory secret ballots.

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patrickg_zill
Why not use the one we have now? It hasn't been used in 50 years.

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rpedela
The constitution has the ability to modify it built-in. The main problem seems
to be that we no longer view that as a viable option.

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pirateking
The next Constitution should be a set of mathematical proofs or computer
program. At the very least, it will make sure law makers and enforcers are
capable of higher order thinking.

I wonder how to properly frame the problem from that approach.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The next Constitution should be a set of mathematical proofs or computer
> program. At the very least, it will make sure law makers and enforcers are
> capable of higher order thinking.

No, it won't. It'll just make it even easier for politicians to obscure their
violations, since most of the public will understand it.

Constitutions don't need to be self-executing, they need to be an effective
tool for the _public_ to hold government accountable to, and if the problem is
that the public doesn't care enough to hold government accountable, no amount
of reforming the Constitution is going to help -- the thing you have to do
first is convince the public again that it is important to have a government
accountable to limits set by the public.

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saraid216
A few years ago, Iceland made the news (with some distortion) by
"crowdsourcing" a new Constitution. [1] I find this an intriguing project, but
getting sufficient representation from a nation of 300 million is several
orders of magnitude harder than getting the same for a nation of 300 thousand.

What if we could do it anyways? What would an IT project for creating and
maintaining a Constitution look like? We talk about version control for
legislation, but what kind of systems might we build in order to maintain the
Constitution itself? What kind of review process would we put in order to
maintain data truth? Or perhaps we wouldn't have truth, but rather distribute
it and fragment things while converging it periodically? Would that be
possible? How, why?

[1] The scare quotes are because the headline actually misrepresented the
depth of the citizens' actual impact. You can do the googling if you want
details.

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mortyseinfeld
For those that TLDR all you have to know is that it's The Atlantic and
leftists don't like the constitution because it get in the ways of their
nefarious and devious plans for the country.

