Why do successful constitutions have the attributes characteristically associated with the rule of law? Why do constitutions involve public reasoning? And, how is such a system sustained as an equilibrium? In this paper, we adapt the framework in our previous work on “what is law?” to the...

Most democratic constitutions fail. The estimated half-life of a democratic constitution adopted between 1789 and 2005 is just sixteen years. This paper explores the conditions that foster constitutional and democratic survival. For democracy to survive, it must be self-enforcing in the sense...

Most students of constitutions focus on normative questions or study the effects of particular constitutional provisions. This paper falls into a third and much smaller tradition that attempts to study what makes some constitutions more likely to survive. This paper develops a theory of...