The Constitutional Good

Constitutionalism involves the purposeful articulation of a polity's normative architecture and has the well-known function of confining power holders. The moral function of constitutionalism, however, which enables the political function, is less understood. Constitutionalism, this article argues, protects the polity by stipulating and thereby lowering its normative horizon, at the cost of obscuring answers to larger normative questions about itself. A constitution thus attenuates the political appropriation of the good, but it requires a peculiar, equivocal connection to that good. The heirs of a healthy constitution, the author concludes, will find such concerns obscure and distant. Those who stand at a constitutional threshold, like the post-communist constitution makers of Europe, will feel them keenly

Appropriation · Articulation (sociology · Constitution · Constitutional theory · Constitutionalism · Democracy · Epistemology · Law and economics · Normative · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Philosophy