When you say that "the document’s deliberate ambiguity wasn’t a flaw but a key feature, and it depended on leaders respecting the system even when breaking it might offer short-term advantage," I can't help but think of this the other way around.
What if the the document’s deliberate ambiguity was a key feature specifically BECAUSE it allowed leaders to buck against the system for short-term advantage. Is there any evidence that the framers were particularly optimistic about the goodwill of America's future leaders? Or is there a chance that they relied on norms with the intention that they could be broken without steep judicial consequence?
That’s such an interesting reframing. There’s some evidence that the framers intentionally built in ambiguity, not so much because they wanted leaders to break norms, but because they understood that no fixed text could cover every situation. They expected disputes to be resolved through politics and norms rather than constant judicial policing.
For example, Hamilton in Federalist 70 emphasized the need for “energy in the executive,” which implies a certain flexibility, while Madison in Federalist 51 assumed that ambition would counteract ambition through institutional rivalry. They didn’t assume future leaders would always be virtuous, but they did assume political cost and public accountability would keep boundary-pushing in check.
So, rather than designing a system where norm-breaking was meant to be harmless, they created one where occasional norm-breaking could happen but was supposed to trigger backlash (from Congress, courts, voters). What my post was trying to get at is that the backlash mechanism isn’t working the same way. Norm-breaking has become a source of political strength rather than a liability, which flips the framers’ assumptions on their head.
When you say that "the document’s deliberate ambiguity wasn’t a flaw but a key feature, and it depended on leaders respecting the system even when breaking it might offer short-term advantage," I can't help but think of this the other way around.
What if the the document’s deliberate ambiguity was a key feature specifically BECAUSE it allowed leaders to buck against the system for short-term advantage. Is there any evidence that the framers were particularly optimistic about the goodwill of America's future leaders? Or is there a chance that they relied on norms with the intention that they could be broken without steep judicial consequence?
That’s such an interesting reframing. There’s some evidence that the framers intentionally built in ambiguity, not so much because they wanted leaders to break norms, but because they understood that no fixed text could cover every situation. They expected disputes to be resolved through politics and norms rather than constant judicial policing.
For example, Hamilton in Federalist 70 emphasized the need for “energy in the executive,” which implies a certain flexibility, while Madison in Federalist 51 assumed that ambition would counteract ambition through institutional rivalry. They didn’t assume future leaders would always be virtuous, but they did assume political cost and public accountability would keep boundary-pushing in check.
So, rather than designing a system where norm-breaking was meant to be harmless, they created one where occasional norm-breaking could happen but was supposed to trigger backlash (from Congress, courts, voters). What my post was trying to get at is that the backlash mechanism isn’t working the same way. Norm-breaking has become a source of political strength rather than a liability, which flips the framers’ assumptions on their head.