Constitutional Decision Rules

Constitutional Rules

This paper proposes a normative theory of constitutional rules. The first-best cannot be achieved whenever constitutional rules cannot be made contingent on information about the costs and benefits of policy reforms. We characterize and welfare rank four classes of second best constitutions: constitutions that specify one rule for all types of decisions; constitutions that provide incentives fo...

Critical decisions and constitutional rules

Many constitutions specify procedures that allow critical decisions to be made with a different rule than routine decisions. We propose a theory of constitutional rules that explains why. The theory is based on the assumption that the type of a decision can be observed, but not veri...ed. We characterize two classes of second-best constitutions, both with clear analogues in real world constitut...

The Warren Court : Constitutional Decision

The appointment in 1953 of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States marked the beginning of a new era in the development of constitutional law. In the ensuing years changes of vast dimension and historic impact have taken place. Few men are better qualified to assess the significance of the decisions of the Warren Court than Archibald Cox, student of law, teacher of law and, from 1961 ...

Power in the Design of Constitutional Rules

This paper examines different ways of measuring power and the use of these measures in the context of the European Union. The paper deals with classical power indices of co-operative games and more recent non-cooperative a priori measures. Special emphasis of the paper is in inter-institutional balance of power, Nice reforms and eastern enlargement. ∗Earlier version and parts of this paper have...

The Structure of Constitutional Amendment Rules