6 ms·

A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. Undermine the institutions and a constitution is no more worth than t

A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. Undermine the institutions and a constitution is no more worth than the paper it’s printed on.

mc32 6y ago
Is that true? If so, why do coups or despots write new ones if they can simply ignore the old one?
- christkv 6y ago
  Sure they write new ones to justify their rule. I’m thinking of constitutions in working democratic countries who protect the rights of citizens and how they only provide rights as long as institutions are there to provide a a theoretically just enforcement. After all constitutions in most western countries came about to restrain the sovereign.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dfadsadsf 6y ago
  Sometimes despots write new constitution and then ignore it completely too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Sovie...
- roenxi 6y ago
  There are a lot of different people in the world. Some of them crave structure at the expense of anything else. Some crave symbolism at the expense of everything else. If a despot or coup leader writes a constitution, those people will get on side for free. It costs nothing to have a constitution. And I doubt either of us have done a survey of dictators; a lot of them probably do just ignore the local constitution. It is important to remember that people who think we should follow the intent of a 100 year old law (or even a 10 year old law) are a tiny minority group. The majority of humans are here-and-now, what-looks-like-a-good-idea-today?, what-do-I-see-in-front-of-me people.
- quasirandom 6y ago
  What's the difference between the US and a despotic regime? We have a gulag system. There is a degree of legal nihilism that borders on lawlessness. For example, the DOJ charged someone with a federal crime for throwing an imported tequila bottle. When the laws mean anything and nothing, you have rule by fiat. There's corruption everywhere...
  - mc32 6y ago
    I’m sure there’s corruption to be found everywhere, however in some places you have recourse, in others you don’t. Borders are quite special areas that one ought to take with utmost seriousness anywhere. You can imagine what would happen if you threw out some coke in the Kuala Lumpur or Singapore airports.
    - quasirandom 6y ago
      Who said anything about a border? A person was arrested in Seattle for throwing a Jose Cuervo bottle imported from Mexico. The importation was the "foreign or interstate" nexus. Do you own anything that is not imported? That's legal nihilism.
bhupy 6y ago
It’s what the US Framers referred to as a “parchment guarantee”, nothing more than words on paper.
- christkv 6y ago
  I don’t know that reference but I could imagine it could be rooted in that concern. Probably why they established the three branches in the us.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    Yup. I recommend watching Justice Scalia talk about exactly that in this video: https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0 https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0
    - refurb 6y ago
      Yup. I thought this is a fantastic summary of the intentional design of the US system. When there is gridlock, that’s a feature, not a big.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    The three branches are the formula, but the real work was in establishing them and making sure they actually work independently. The real work also continued in the many men and women who powered these institutions during the early years and kept true to their purpose. There are plenty of countries that have the same nominal separation of powers, guaranteed by a constitution and a Supreme Court, but where the nominal separation of powers matters little in the face of political games. Hungary and Poland are relatively well known recent examples of countries that have subverted strong constitutional guarantees by inventing exceptions or finding reasons to oust people who are opposing political will for institutional reasons. In more corrupt states it can happen more egregiously. A big problem, especially in young states, is the natural tendency to dislike red tape. Institutional power is all about red tape, though - doing something through the proper channels, with the proper oversight, even if it takes 3 times as long and costs twice as much as it should. This is the biggest hurdle that a young democracy has to overcome - learning to trust the apparent inefficiency of complex institutions (and knowing how to reform institutions that really don't work).
majormajor 6y ago
Is there something special about "the institutions" or does it have more to do with the people themselves? Both what citizens will tolerate and what politicians will try to get away with?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Yes, both. You need institutions strong enough to, for example, stop a president that exceeds his authority. But you need people who make the institutions do what they're supposed to do.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Institutions (strong ones, the ones that really work) have a way of transcending the desires of their members. An functioning institution won't stop functioning because of a few members with un aligned goals - this is similar to the way distributed systems are deigned, where you want to have redundancy and a quorum to ensure that the cluster survives network partitions and problems with the leader node. Of course, an institution won't survive a certain percentage of its members being malign. The stronger the institution, the larger that number is. To give some ideas of the mechanisms that make this possible, internal reviews are one of the most powerful forces for making sure that rules established yesterday are still respected by people who join tomorrow, even at the very top.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
This seems like a reference to the last election
- burnte 6y ago
  Or a reference to the last 40 years...
  - smorrow 6y ago
    40 years? Try being anti-war under Woodrow Wilson. https://youtu.be/-gDvdRBiDvQ https://youtu.be/-gDvdRBiDvQ
throw0101a 6y ago
> A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. People: > Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. * Masha Gessen, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival", https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-auto... > There are no institutions, only people. > It took him some time, but at Justice, at CoS, at OMB, at USTR, at NEC, at Treasury, at NSC, and now at ODNI Trump has found people broken enough to serve him as he demands to be served. * https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395 https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395 (Feb 22, 2020) > A good reminder that Trump choose people as the heads of institutions with the expectations that they would destroy those institutions. * https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1374186031289880577 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1374186031289880577 (Mar 22, 2021)
eointierney 6y ago
Yes but the institutions are defined in the constitutions. In the Republic of Ireland we have a relatively good constitution, fairly active, that has a vast hole in the first paragraph of Article 45: ARTICLE 45 The principles of social policy set forth in this Article are intended for the general guidance of the Oireachtas. The application of those principles in the making of laws shall be the care of the Oireachtas exclusively, and shall not be cognisable by any Court under any of the provisions of this Constitution. This obviously both deliberate and insane. We should remove it. It is the biggest institutional flaw in our constitution. But Bunreacht na hEireann is worth so much more than the paper its printed on, or the jurisdiction of the courts it defines. It is the code of the country, the will of the people, enacted, modified and attained. It is the source of our of our law, our shared hope, and our sense of gathered self. We are our constitution, we are free.
- pm 6y ago
  Pardon my ignorance as I'm not Irish, and don't understand the significance of that passage, but what is the hole exactly?
  - eointierney 6y ago
    The hole is the lack of access to the courts to to appeal decisions of the Government on maybe 90% of the business of the Governement. If you read the rest of the article it's actually pretty cool if old fashioned. If it was justicable it would be awesome.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      No, this is good. If the people want something they can vote a government in to do it. Otherwise you get abominations like when the Taiwanese Supreme Court legalized gay marriage after a referendum rejected it. If you’re going to go that far you might as well just drop the democratic pretense from liberal democracy and just go with liberalism.
      - 6y ago
muskox2 6y ago
For example, the Chinese constitution guarantees it's citizens the right of free speech.

A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. Undermine the institutions and a constitution is no more worth than the paper it’s printed on.

mc32 6y ago

Is that true? If so, why do coups or despots write new ones if they can simply ignore the old one?

christkv 6y ago
Sure they write new ones to justify their rule. I’m thinking of constitutions in working democratic countries who protect the rights of citizens and how they only provide rights as long as institutions are there to provide a a theoretically just enforcement. After all constitutions in most western countries came about to restrain the sovereign.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dfadsadsf 6y ago
Sometimes despots write new constitution and then ignore it completely too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Sovie...
roenxi 6y ago
There are a lot of different people in the world. Some of them crave structure at the expense of anything else. Some crave symbolism at the expense of everything else. If a despot or coup leader writes a constitution, those people will get on side for free. It costs nothing to have a constitution. And I doubt either of us have done a survey of dictators; a lot of them probably do just ignore the local constitution. It is important to remember that people who think we should follow the intent of a 100 year old law (or even a 10 year old law) are a tiny minority group. The majority of humans are here-and-now, what-looks-like-a-good-idea-today?, what-do-I-see-in-front-of-me people.
quasirandom 6y ago
What's the difference between the US and a despotic regime? We have a gulag system. There is a degree of legal nihilism that borders on lawlessness. For example, the DOJ charged someone with a federal crime for throwing an imported tequila bottle. When the laws mean anything and nothing, you have rule by fiat. There's corruption everywhere...
- mc32 6y ago
  I’m sure there’s corruption to be found everywhere, however in some places you have recourse, in others you don’t. Borders are quite special areas that one ought to take with utmost seriousness anywhere. You can imagine what would happen if you threw out some coke in the Kuala Lumpur or Singapore airports.
  - quasirandom 6y ago
    Who said anything about a border? A person was arrested in Seattle for throwing a Jose Cuervo bottle imported from Mexico. The importation was the "foreign or interstate" nexus. Do you own anything that is not imported? That's legal nihilism.

bhupy 6y ago

It’s what the US Framers referred to as a “parchment guarantee”, nothing more than words on paper.

christkv 6y ago
I don’t know that reference but I could imagine it could be rooted in that concern. Probably why they established the three branches in the us.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Yup. I recommend watching Justice Scalia talk about exactly that in this video: https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0 https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0
  - refurb 6y ago
    Yup. I thought this is a fantastic summary of the intentional design of the US system. When there is gridlock, that’s a feature, not a big.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  The three branches are the formula, but the real work was in establishing them and making sure they actually work independently. The real work also continued in the many men and women who powered these institutions during the early years and kept true to their purpose. There are plenty of countries that have the same nominal separation of powers, guaranteed by a constitution and a Supreme Court, but where the nominal separation of powers matters little in the face of political games. Hungary and Poland are relatively well known recent examples of countries that have subverted strong constitutional guarantees by inventing exceptions or finding reasons to oust people who are opposing political will for institutional reasons. In more corrupt states it can happen more egregiously. A big problem, especially in young states, is the natural tendency to dislike red tape. Institutional power is all about red tape, though - doing something through the proper channels, with the proper oversight, even if it takes 3 times as long and costs twice as much as it should. This is the biggest hurdle that a young democracy has to overcome - learning to trust the apparent inefficiency of complex institutions (and knowing how to reform institutions that really don't work).

majormajor 6y ago

Is there something special about "the institutions" or does it have more to do with the people themselves? Both what citizens will tolerate and what politicians will try to get away with?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Yes, both. You need institutions strong enough to, for example, stop a president that exceeds his authority. But you need people who make the institutions do what they're supposed to do.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Institutions (strong ones, the ones that really work) have a way of transcending the desires of their members. An functioning institution won't stop functioning because of a few members with un aligned goals - this is similar to the way distributed systems are deigned, where you want to have redundancy and a quorum to ensure that the cluster survives network partitions and problems with the leader node. Of course, an institution won't survive a certain percentage of its members being malign. The stronger the institution, the larger that number is. To give some ideas of the mechanisms that make this possible, internal reviews are one of the most powerful forces for making sure that rules established yesterday are still respected by people who join tomorrow, even at the very top.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

This seems like a reference to the last election

burnte 6y ago
Or a reference to the last 40 years...
- smorrow 6y ago
  40 years? Try being anti-war under Woodrow Wilson. https://youtu.be/-gDvdRBiDvQ https://youtu.be/-gDvdRBiDvQ

throw0101a 6y ago

> A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. People: > Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. * Masha Gessen, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival", https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-auto... > There are no institutions, only people. > It took him some time, but at Justice, at CoS, at OMB, at USTR, at NEC, at Treasury, at NSC, and now at ODNI Trump has found people broken enough to serve him as he demands to be served. * https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395 https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395 (Feb 22, 2020) > A good reminder that Trump choose people as the heads of institutions with the expectations that they would destroy those institutions. * https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1374186031289880577 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1374186031289880577 (Mar 22, 2021)

eointierney 6y ago

Yes but the institutions are defined in the constitutions. In the Republic of Ireland we have a relatively good constitution, fairly active, that has a vast hole in the first paragraph of Article 45: ARTICLE 45 The principles of social policy set forth in this Article are intended for the general guidance of the Oireachtas. The application of those principles in the making of laws shall be the care of the Oireachtas exclusively, and shall not be cognisable by any Court under any of the provisions of this Constitution. This obviously both deliberate and insane. We should remove it. It is the biggest institutional flaw in our constitution. But Bunreacht na hEireann is worth so much more than the paper its printed on, or the jurisdiction of the courts it defines. It is the code of the country, the will of the people, enacted, modified and attained. It is the source of our of our law, our shared hope, and our sense of gathered self. We are our constitution, we are free.

pm 6y ago
Pardon my ignorance as I'm not Irish, and don't understand the significance of that passage, but what is the hole exactly?
- eointierney 6y ago
  The hole is the lack of access to the courts to to appeal decisions of the Government on maybe 90% of the business of the Governement. If you read the rest of the article it's actually pretty cool if old fashioned. If it was justicable it would be awesome.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    No, this is good. If the people want something they can vote a government in to do it. Otherwise you get abominations like when the Taiwanese Supreme Court legalized gay marriage after a referendum rejected it. If you’re going to go that far you might as well just drop the democratic pretense from liberal democracy and just go with liberalism.
    - 6y ago

muskox2 6y ago

For example, the Chinese constitution guarantees it's citizens the right of free speech.