Defending the Constitutional Order

This paper defends the constitutional order because it is endangered. It speaks of a ‘constitutional order’ because decent political life requires the stability that order brings. To stay free, a people must know what to expect from government and what the rules of the game are. But a constitution is not merely a rulebook; it is a regimen. It teaches us how to live well politically and what government can and must do and what it should refrain from doing. The Constitutional order did not become endangered overnight. Its erosion has a history, dating back at least as far as the early 20th Century. The paper places this erosion in historical context because to understand where we are now we need to understand the critical choices that got us here and the rationales behind them. It concludes by offering a principle for reviving contemporary constitutionalism..