Posted by
Andrews on Friday, April 18, 2008 4:57:33 PM
My previous post reminded me of a topic I had been meaning to address for some time, the benefit of predictability. Most often this topic arises when I argue with thsoe who advocate the adoption of the "living document" view of the Constitution, but it fits just as well with my arguments for a common culture. Basically, whenever a specific action produces a predictable outcome, people will benefits, and whenever the outcome is not predictable, people will suffer.
Let us remove this from the real of law or culture, and just look at it in very general terms. We rely in everyday life on predictable outcomes. We open the can with the picture of corn expecting corn inside. Were it sometime to contain a rattlesnake or poison gas, the value of canned food would drop incredibly. Similarly, we expect that going to work every day will result in a weekly check. If sometimes we were paid and sometimes thugs beat us senseless, we would probably seek another job.
It is a principle we recognize very well in everyday life, recognize everywhere outside of the law. Science is based entirely on the predictability of cause and effect. Even when we enter the murky area of subatomic physics with tis probabilities, we still have a set of known outcomes, and the likelihood of each, there are many outcomes which are so unlikely as to be considered impossible.
Only when it comes to law do people lose all common sense and argue in favor of unpredictability. The advocates of "living documents" are basically making that argument. The entire point of a constitution, of written law as a whole, is that it has a fixed meaning, and that people can act based upon the assumption that the law will behave in a predictable way. Once we introduce the idea of a "living Constitution", that benefit vanishes. If something may be legal today and illegal tomorrow, then planning breaks down. We are left in the situation of those living under the whim of a capricious dictator, unable to plan beyond the immediate moment.
It may not make sense to everyone, but it is better to live under a predictable tyranny than under a benevolent, but unpredictable ruler. At least under the consistent tyrant, the citizens can predict what actions will be needed to achieve specific results. When the law becomes unpredictable, this is no longer possible. If you do not know what you need to do to achieve your desired results, you are left unable to act. Unpredictability results simply in impotence.
And that is what the advocates of the "living Constitution" are endorsing, removing the single benefit of written law, predictability, making the Constitution worthless.