Memetic fertilization

posted at 8:53 pm on September 30, 2009 by
[ Supreme Court ]   

I don’t suppose it’s a particularly controversial thing to say that the American Revolution was one of the most important events in world history.

And the writing of the US Constitution was a major part of the reason why. There are a lot of radical things in the US system, but most of them have historical precedents. There is, however, one really radical thing which was entirely new: the Supreme Court, and the idea of making the Supreme Court a third branch of government, equal in stature to the executive and the legislative branches.

Over time, it’s become clear that this was a brilliant innovation. It’s served us very well, and many other nations have come to copy it. And now I see that even the Brits have done so.

I wonder if we can convince them to create a formal Bill of Rights next? “Parliament shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, nor preventing the free exercise thereof, nor infringing freedom of speech…” Naah, it’ll never happen.

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I admit I haven’t read Montesquieu myself, but I understand that he adapted Locke’s separation of legislative and executive powers by making a further separation of judicial and (more narrowly) executive powers. And I’ve long suspected that the three-way separation of powers is an application of Machiavelli’s counsel, offered in Discourses III.6, that it is difficult to conspire against two.

Kralizec on September 30, 2009 at 10:28 PM

I’d say the more radical thing about the US Constitution was that it delegated powers from the people to the government, rather than assigning rights to the people from the government.

But structurally, ya, I’d say you have the right of it.

Russ on October 1, 2009 at 2:59 AM