Earlier this month, a new Constitution was put before Chilean voters, and they rejected it overwhelmingly. The proposed document was 170 pages long and contained 388 articles; not a light read by any means. Worse than its length, and the cause of it, was the desire on the part of the drafters to treat a Constitution like a policy wish list. You see this in many contemporary Constitutions, which are thereby similarly bloated. You even see this in documents aspirationally drafted for America.
What exactly should we expect from a Constitution? What should a new one be trying to do?
When the founding generation in America proposed our Constitution, the key figures like Madison were trying to avert what they saw as an inevitable catastrophe. The status quo arrangement was likely to lead to military conflict between the states, and the state legislatures were (in Madison’s view) spiraling out of control. The goal was to create a political, military, and economic union that would be stable and mutually beneficial, avoiding open conflict and providing a strong executive anchor to keep legislatures grounded.
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