You Can't Predict Everything

There was an original hope that the perfect constitution could direct you to the answers.

During the 18th century as classical liberalism blossomed in most democratic theory it produced a legal offspring. The idea of formalizing constitutional structures became commonplace in most countries. Even those that didn't necessarily adopt, such as England, still had movements that went in that direction.

The ideal was that you could produce a neutral legal code which would solve many political disagreements without traditional passions from rising. There's been roughly 200 years of conflict that were largely run on cultural and religious differences. A solution to that issue would be rather appealing.

This scenario opens the idea that if the law could help mitigate those passions that would cause so much discord you could structure your society around the central document. not just as a symbol but is the Practical tool that would solve all of your problems.

At the center of the conversation was a premise that wasn't completely flushed out. Generally speaking the belief was that legal codes produced a rule book, but could it also produce an answer? Was it possible to make it much simpler to manage societal interactions with consistency? For many that were now pushing more standardized constitutions, the presumption was the mechanized structure would also always produce a conclusion that everybody would see as being a reasonable compromise. Rationality would overcome emotions.

Public policy would become a matter of simply seeing a particular input and the structure would then shoot out an automatic response.

A study on the United States Constitution was titled ‘A Machine That Would Work by Itself’.

As if in the spirit of the age, when science was flourishing, the belief that you could use past evidence to project future events fit at least partly into the drafting. Among the arguments that were levied against the US Constitution before its ratification was that it put too much emphasis on the standardization. The neutral legal code presumes that human beings would function more like machines and less like individuals who could periodically be irrational. Was it really legitimate to believe that you could manage affairs in this fashion.

Following the convention when there were a number of editorials being published, there were particularly fiery exchanges going on in New York papers. One author writing under the pseudonym of Brutus pointed out one particular consideration.

“ it is admitted, that human wisdom cannot foresee all variety of circumstances that may arise to endanger the safety of Nations and it may be with equal truth be added”

In many ways this was more like foreshadowing. Conservatives would consistently come to attack liberalism for the presumption of being able to manipulate actions due to structures. Liberalism in this era in many respects is understood as being trying to produce structures that mitigate the worst of human behavior. This was great as long as the behavior in question was one that was known and easy to predict. The problem is what happens if an individual does something completely new that could not have been understood beforehand.

Too much emphasis was put on the idea that human behavior could be turned into something of a science. The primary counter argument, and Brutus wasn't alone in this regard, arguing that for something that couldn't be predicted it was impossible to rely on a conclusion that had been reached based only on the past.

In modern times there's been a new drive among some legal circles to argue constitutional theory operates more on driving what any particular government structure can and can't do. Not necessarily prescribing what it should do at any given time. We tell legislators what their terms are and on what issues they're allowed to have conversations. We don't tell them how they're supposed to vote when a piece of legislation comes up. You have to respect that people are able to make choices based on what is known now and recognizing that there's new information coming all the time.

This was one of the flaws at the founding. The belief that you could design a government that by its very nature would project rational actions out of the particular conversation. That allowed you to ignore the particular individuals that might be there. But as no one knows what the future brings those individuals are going to have to make choices that no one who drafted the original documents could have considered.

It's why conservatism uses the argument of circumstance so frequently. One can use experience to know certain responses to various ideas. But a sense of humility of knowing that you're going to encounter something you have no experience with is also part of wisdom. Being cautious and prudent in order to ascertain the best course of action is still part of the human experience. No Constitution can perfect a mode for designing a future in this way.

Constitutional structures were popular because they mitigated the worst of human nature. On this front they've been fairly successful. They struggle with telling anyone what the correct course of action is because circumstance can't be turned into a scientific equation. It's something that continues to prop up with regularity today when someone presumes that a constitutional argument will prescribe a specific policy pronouncement. We still are supposed to do politics with different points of view. After all most people derive different perspectives because they come from different places and might see different courses of action causing different futures.