Rationale

Early draft

No country seems to revere its constitution quite like the United States. Yet after a century of sustained government expansion, with little sign of reversal, it is hard to deny that the U.S. constitutional order has important structural weaknesses. Some failures come from interpretation, but if a constitution is repeatedly interpreted in ways that undermine its purpose, that is itself a design problem.

At the same time, the U.S. model has produced durable successes that are worth preserving and strengthening. This rationale identifies those strengths, diagnoses key failures, and proposes institutional reforms aimed at protecting limited government, federalism, and economic freedom.

What has worked

Separation of powers

Separation of powers can reduce interventionism because officials are less likely to expand state power when political opponents may later control that power. In comparative terms, the U.S. has often had stronger executive-legislative separation than parliamentary systems. A distinct judiciary has also been a major success globally.

However, the U.S. presidency has accumulated excessive influence. In particular, the veto power gives the executive a quasi-legislative role that blurs the separation principle. A new constitution should deepen institutional separation and reduce opportunities for power concentration.

Enumerated rights protections

Explicit rights protections (for example, speech protections) have often constrained government abuse. But rights language can erode over time through reinterpretation or mismatch with changing technology and social conditions. If constitutional limits are unrealistically rigid, political actors may bypass or dilute them rather than obey them.

The implication is not that rights protections should be weaker, but that constitutional design should focus on institutions that systematically reward restraint. As Milton Friedman argued, the goal is not to rely on electing perfect people, but to make it politically profitable for imperfect people to do the right thing.

Federalism and interjurisdictional competition

Federalism can discipline policy by allowing people and capital to move between states. Competition between jurisdictions tends to pressure governments toward lower regulatory and tax burdens than they would otherwise impose. This mechanism depends on free movement of people and goods, plus real limits on central authority.

A persistent weakness in the U.S. experience is federal overreach through constitutional interpretation, including expansive readings of federal power. A revised constitution should include stronger safeguards that preserve meaningful state autonomy.

Bicameralism and divided government

Bicameral legislatures can slow legislation and reduce policy volatility. Conflict between chambers can function as a brake on rapid expansion of spending and regulation. The upper chamber can also represent subnational interests and counterbalance majoritarian centralization.

A new constitution should preserve bicameralism, reinforce the upper chamber’s state-representative function, and design electoral timing to increase constructive inter-branch and inter-chamber tension.

What has not worked

The American electoral process creates persistent representation and incentive problems. Winner-take-all systems marginalize minority viewpoints and channel politics into broad, polarized party coalitions. At the same time, dispersed costs and concentrated benefits create strong incentives for rent-seeking, where organized interests secure targeted gains while costs are spread across the public.

This dynamic can also weaken the virtues of gridlock: compromise may become mutual accommodation of special interests rather than reciprocal restraint. A new constitution should therefore redesign representation and budgeting institutions to reduce rent-seeking incentives.

Core proposals

Based on the analysis above, the following reforms are proposed:

  1. Separate revenue power from spending power. Create dedicated “revenue chambers” with sole authority over taxation and borrowing, while existing legislative chambers retain authority over spending and ordinary lawmaking. This separates the political incentives to raise money from the incentives to spend it.

  2. Remove the presidential veto. The veto undermines strict separation of powers and over-concentrates authority in the executive.

  3. Adopt proportional representation for the lower house. Replace winner-take-all elections with proportional representation (for example, party-list systems) to improve minority representation.

  4. Strengthen state influence in federal institutions. Have state governments appoint senators and Supreme Court justices, and expand the Court to reflect the number of states.

  5. Replace the Electoral College with a national ranked method. Elect the president by nationwide popular vote using a ranked method such as ranked pairs.

  6. Stagger elections to increase institutional conflict. Use election timing that reduces one-party capture across all institutions at once.

  7. Cap state geographic size (or require subdivision above a threshold). Smaller states increase policy competition and reduce local monopoly power.

  8. Constitutionally guarantee interstate mobility and commerce. Protect free movement of people, goods, and services across states.

  9. Limit federal competence to non-aggression enforcement and foreign policy. Define powers with precision, remove vague clauses, and include concrete examples to minimize interpretive drift.

  10. Require a lower threshold to repeal laws than to enact laws. Example: simple majority to repeal, supermajority to pass. This offsets the structural tendency toward legal accumulation.

Additional ideas for exploration

The following concepts merit further development and empirical review:

  • Sortition elements in governance, including potential use in minister selection or partial chamber composition.
  • Minority or sector representation mechanisms, as used in some jurisdictions.
  • Constitutional monetary constraints, including legal-tender design choices that limit discretionary fiscal extraction.
  • Tax-base redesign, including making federal taxation dependent on state-level revenue bases.
  • Different electoral systems across chambers to maximize institutional independence.
  • Short federal term limits to reduce national-level personalistic leadership.
  • Secession safeguards tied to constitutional amendment events.
  • Balanced-budget constraints with emergency supermajority escape clauses.
  • Ban policing for profit, executive in-house courts, prison labor, and abusive procedural tactics.
  • Single-subject bill rules, anti-rider provisions, and constitutional citation requirements in legislation.
  • Pre-enactment constitutional review models and narrower judicial jurisdiction.
  • Independent constitutional plaintiff/guardian offices with standing to challenge ultra vires acts.
  • Limits on conditional grants and retroactive taxation.
  • Expanded standing for state and federal officials to sue for constitutional violations.
  • State override mechanisms in defined enforcement domains.

Design principle

The central design objective is not to assume benevolent leaders, but to create institutions where political survival aligns with limited government. Durable constitutional success depends less on ideal officeholders and more on incentive-compatible structures that make centralization difficult, visible, and reversible.

Open question

Which additional institutional mechanisms best protect limited government and free-market capitalism without creating constitutional rigidity that later actors can easily circumvent?

Selected references