Adapted from e-mail conversations with RLC of 29, November and 13, December 1999. His comments are in blockquotes with a red bar to the side.
Sir, you would have a legal caste created to do the pronouncements of what is legal and what is not. Sir, the less the general public can understand their Constitution the more room for mischief and harm that can be done by the temple priests and scribes.
Our own constitution is no better on this part, and for good reason. A constitution must, by nessicity, be a complex document if the state is to be more than a mere autocracy or anarchy. A citizen need only know the law to the extent nessicary to conform his conduct and debate intelegently. The vast majority of rules are needed only by lawers and judges.
It suffices that a citizen know she has certain article I rights: Speech, voting, privacy, due process, free religion, and property and that the constitution protects them. When she percieves an encroachment upon the general category of her rights, she will quickly turn to the document itself (which is written in plain English) or to her attourney to see if he can do something about it.
Likewise, an ordinary citizen need not know the whole process of lawmaking, only that there is a defined process, that her elected representatives in the Parlaiment and on the Council make them for her by some arcane process he was taught years ago in civics class involving consensus comittees, and that there are citizens on them. Should she ever be called for one, she can easily enough determine what she is to do and what her rights and duties are in the case. She needs no clue of the arcanities by which her taxes (if she pays any at all) are set and appropriated, only that she is to gripe to her representatives when she dosn't like them.
She dosn't need to know the whole process by which members of Parliament are elected, she only needs to know that she is to rank the ones she likes and that 1 is best, and maybe that she's doing well if several get elected.
Sir, I understand the need for experience and training here but as you are so careful to include the general public in the rest of the public business I would think you would your use your inventive and resourceful self to open up this area also. Sir, or is it ok to have learned amateurs play important roles in other parts of your republic but it is too important to leave in their hands in the judicial area?
Delicate questions of constitutional interpretation shouldn't need to be hashed out by citizens, as they need not know more than listed above unless required by some station in life to know more and so probably will not. Only experts are affected by the answers to most questions of constitutional interpretation, and so only experts and interested parties would care. Those decisions which affect everyone will be well publicized and debated, and those which are significantly controversial will be affirmed or struck by ordinary democratic process, which is open enough already, or by constitutional amendment, which is even moreso.
Learned amateurs do play a role in the judicial system: Jurors. They decide the facts in every case and invarriably act against percieved injustice by holding the prosecutors to a higher standard of proof. The law, however, is, by nessecity, a tecnical and arcane thing: laid out in a large number of exceptionally thick and dusty books at the back of your lawer's office. It would be unnessicarily burdensome to require that each citizen be involved in the debating of every subtle nuance of every possible meaning as the courts are charged to do.
Sir, this is just as true on the law making side of things, one could make the case that the general citizenry should not be involved in making the laws of the land.
Except for initiatives and petitions, they aren't diorectly. There are *three* non-expert non-party citizens on a consensus comittee, and they can be expected, given the unlimited time which consensus comittees have to deliberate, to gain considerable knowledge from their fellow members.
Politicians and executives can be expected to be trained in their jobs, if not formally then at least on-the-job. Judges and lawers are required to have formal training. With referenda the public only considers what has already been passed.
Just as one can expect that a politician will respond to the letters and calls from his constituents, the courts have similar processes and respond well to cases and amicus briefs.
I think it would hurt the Constitution in the long run if the general public and its constituent parts did not feel they had a stake in it or that they were being fairly represented.
I can expect that a citizen would know as much of the constitution as I list above, and generally will need very little more unless she wishes to become an attourney or a professional legislator. She will generally neither know nor care that some subtle nuance has been resolved unless it affects some policy she cares about.
Citizens care about policies, not nuances. Generally, they like their system of government just fine unless there's something seriously wrong with the way they're being governed. Under STV, a citizen has a very good chance of someone she voted for being in office and acting for her something like she herself would on her own issues, and so at the verry least that citizen will feel represented in the government, secure in the knowledge that someone is fighting the good fight for her, even if they're not always winning. It's sufficient that they win occasionally for her to feel represented, and with cumulative voting, they usually do.
If she has something to say to the government, she'll write her favorite politician, whose staff will dutifully read her letter and tally her position alongside all the other constituents who like that politician, so that they may take the positions which offend the smallest portion of their constituentcy vote while pleasing the largest portion. And if she dosn't get what she wants, she might just start a petition and call that consensus comittee herself (along with 3% of the population) or maybe even run for parlaiment in a couple of terms.
That much, plus generally reasonable policies overall, is perfectly sufficient for a citizen to feel represented and be happy with their government. That's representative democracy at its best, nobody gets everything they want, but most people get most of it, almost everybody gets enough to feel represented, and everybody has a fair shot.
What does the citizen really need to know to get the whole of the document? There's a Parlaiment, which makes laws, via some horribly complex process involving consensus comittees, a Council which formulates policies relating to the laws and appoints people, a Prime Minister on the Council who sees that the laws are executed according to the Council's will and Parlaiment's intent. Plus that there's a judiciary who review laws and decide cases. There's a constitution that specifies this layout of the government, plus protects your rights, and it can be amended by a particular process.
What part of that would not be common knowledge to a person living under the system? One need only relate specific sections to the general scheme. One need only know that that something relates to consensus comittees, or to the process of law-making and vaguely where (ie. topic, consensus comittee, acceptance, interpretation, execution, reconsideration) or to the appropriation of money, etc.
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