Daryl Levinson

to have these constraints for everyone or coordinating us on some shared system of government that allows us to get stuff done that we all want to get done and that we prefer to fighting wars with each other. And then there are these legitimation ideas that we somehow get entranced by law and are willing to go along with people who we think are wise law sayers and stuff like that.

to have these constraints for everyone or coordinating us on some shared system of government that allows us to get stuff done that we all want to get done and that we prefer to fighting wars with each other. And then there are these legitimation ideas that we somehow get entranced by law and are willing to go along with people who we think are wise law sayers and stuff like that.

Yeah. So that your evil version of constructivism could be, yeah. So of course you're right. Like the, the, the question of why does the president pay attention to the Supreme court presupposes that there's a president who is elected and empowered the way the constitution describes and that there's a Supreme court and, and set up according to article three. And why do we have those things

Yeah. So that your evil version of constructivism could be, yeah. So of course you're right. Like the, the, the question of why does the president pay attention to the Supreme court presupposes that there's a president who is elected and empowered the way the constitution describes and that there's a Supreme court and, and set up according to article three. And why do we have those things

There's a regress and there are turtles. You've got to explain, ultimately, why anyone is willing to go along with any of these constitutional rules or arrangements. If you're building the thing from the state of nature in a Hobbesian way, you've got to have some reason for that. I think the reasons are the standard kinds of reasons.

There's a regress and there are turtles. You've got to explain, ultimately, why anyone is willing to go along with any of these constitutional rules or arrangements. If you're building the thing from the state of nature in a Hobbesian way, you've got to have some reason for that. I think the reasons are the standard kinds of reasons.

You've got to tell a sort of ground-up story of either why it's in people's interest or

You've got to tell a sort of ground-up story of either why it's in people's interest or

in some longer or broader term or shorter term and immediate way to cooperate in these schemes of law, or you've got to have a story about how a lot of people are being duped by the people who have managed to get their interests furthered by creating schemes and convincing people that they should want to go along because it's really great to comply with the law or whatever.

in some longer or broader term or shorter term and immediate way to cooperate in these schemes of law, or you've got to have a story about how a lot of people are being duped by the people who have managed to get their interests furthered by creating schemes and convincing people that they should want to go along because it's really great to comply with the law or whatever.

It could have in a path-dependent way, right? So the coordination game story is we could coordinate around anything. And it just so happens that instead of coordinating around the Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta or... what I wrote on a cocktail napkin when I was drunk and designing my scheme for what the country should be like.

It could have in a path-dependent way, right? So the coordination game story is we could coordinate around anything. And it just so happens that instead of coordinating around the Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta or... what I wrote on a cocktail napkin when I was drunk and designing my scheme for what the country should be like.

We coordinated around this text called the Constitution. And the text that we coordinated around wasn't even what people at the time thought the Constitution was. Historians like Jonathan Gnapp teach us Instead, as some of your own work and Dan's work has elaborated, it was some conception of fundamental law or general law.

We coordinated around this text called the Constitution. And the text that we coordinated around wasn't even what people at the time thought the Constitution was. Historians like Jonathan Gnapp teach us Instead, as some of your own work and Dan's work has elaborated, it was some conception of fundamental law or general law.

that the constitutional text may have been a part of or may have alluded to, but wasn't the thing itself. But it doesn't matter because once we coordinate around something, all that matters is that we've coordinated around it. And it's really hard to re-coordinate in a large and fractious society, as you say. So you could think of this as a story of great success.

that the constitutional text may have been a part of or may have alluded to, but wasn't the thing itself. But it doesn't matter because once we coordinate around something, all that matters is that we've coordinated around it. And it's really hard to re-coordinate in a large and fractious society, as you say. So you could think of this as a story of great success.

Like we somehow got lucky and managed to coordinate to an adequate extent around at least some basic features of the Constitution and the constitutional system of government. And that's what's helped us preserve stability for this long period of time in American history. You could think of it as a tragic or absurd story where we're stuck coordinating around a set of

Like we somehow got lucky and managed to coordinate to an adequate extent around at least some basic features of the Constitution and the constitutional system of government. And that's what's helped us preserve stability for this long period of time in American history. You could think of it as a tragic or absurd story where we're stuck coordinating around a set of

things written in a document that has nothing to do with the problems that we face today or the best way to run our society today. But everyone's so afraid of giving up that coordination and going to war with each other that we have to just keep doing it instead of having a new constitutional convention or trying to re-coordinate around something else.

things written in a document that has nothing to do with the problems that we face today or the best way to run our society today. But everyone's so afraid of giving up that coordination and going to war with each other that we have to just keep doing it instead of having a new constitutional convention or trying to re-coordinate around something else.