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Bargaining in Philadelphia: Constitutional Games, Rational Law-Making, and Originalism

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Exploring the Province of Legislation

Part of the book series: Legisprudence Library ((LEGIS,volume 9))

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Abstract

This article explores a possible bargaining-based account of the U.S. Constitution and its impact on intention-based originalism. I argue that the bargaining approach leads to a characterization of original intent in terms of rules in equilibria. The adoption of the U.S. (Federal) Constitution is the institutional result of coordination among a plurality of State agents with opposed interests and political views. Game theory might offer a rational reconstruction of the constitution-making process: under the game-theoretic model, the Constitution is the product of a series of intentional actions performed by individual agents behaving mainly as selfish individuals or group utility maximizers. These agents operate within a specific institutional framework. Game theory saves the intuition that law-making at the constitutional method can be effectively understood as a rational process. What is more, it might justify an originalist method for constitutional interpretation: we shall interpret constitutional provisions in light of their underlying equilibria.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Möllers (2013), pp. 1 ff.

  2. 2.

    See generally Schapiro (2011).

  3. 3.

    See generally Atienza and Ruiz Manero (1996); Moreso 2009.

  4. 4.

    See generally Dworkin (1986).

  5. 5.

    See generally Rawls (1971).

  6. 6.

    Buchanan (1978), pp. 5 ff.

  7. 7.

    Heckathorn and Maser (1987), p. 143.

  8. 8.

    Hayek (1973).

  9. 9.

    Troper (2006), p. 78.

  10. 10.

    Elster (1995), p. 365.

  11. 11.

    Heckathorn and Maser (1987), pp. 142 ff.

  12. 12.

    Heckathorn and Maser (1987), p. 143.

  13. 13.

    Elster (2018), p. 216.

  14. 14.

    Elster (1995), p. 371.

  15. 15.

    Elster (2018), pp. 222 ff.

  16. 16.

    Elster (1995), p. 372, footnote 19.

  17. 17.

    Heckathorn and Maser (1987), p. 146.

  18. 18.

    Elster (1995), p. 374.

  19. 19.

    Elster (1979), Chapter II.

  20. 20.

    Elster (1995), p. 376; Elster (2018), pp. 207 ff.; Hume (1987).

  21. 21.

    Elster (1995), p. 377.

  22. 22.

    Elster (2018), p. 207.

  23. 23.

    Farrand (1911).

  24. 24.

    Roche (1961), pp. 799 ff.; McDonald (1979), Chapter 5.

  25. 25.

    Heckathorn and Maser (1987), p. 152. The proposals ranged from annual election to 20 years of mandate.

  26. 26.

    Farrand (1911), Vol. 1, pp. 196–202; Elster (1995), p. 375.

  27. 27.

    Farrand (1911), Vol. 1, p. 500. Gunning Bedford of Delaware declares: ‘I do not, gentlemen, trust you. If you possess the power, the abuse of it could not be checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our destruction?’.

  28. 28.

    Elster (1995), p. 374.

  29. 29.

    Jillson and Eubanks (1984), p. 445 ff.; Farrand (1911), Vol. 1, p. 196.

  30. 30.

    Buchanan and Tullock (1962).

  31. 31.

    Beard (1986); McGuire (1988), pp. 483 ff.

  32. 32.

    Elster (1995), p. 388.

  33. 33.

    Elster (1995), pp. 384, 390.

  34. 34.

    Beard (1986), pp. 16–18.

  35. 35.

    Elkins and McKittrick (1961), pp. 181 ff.; Rutland (1966).

  36. 36.

    Lee (1960); Schuyler (1961), pp. 73–80.

  37. 37.

    McGuire (1988), pp. 504 ff. Under this model, a vote is conceived as a double function: a function of the economic interests and ideologies of the delegate (Vi = f (DE, DI)), and a function of the economic interests and ideologies of his constituents (Vi = f (CE, CI), where Vi is a dummy variable representing a delegate’s vote on issue I, limited to yes = 1 OR no = 0; DE is the set of variables measuring personal economic interests, DI is the set of variables measuring personal ideology, CE is the set of variables proxying his constituents’ economic interests, and CI the set of variables proxying the constituents’ ideology). The delegates to the Philadelphia convention acted as utility maximizers concerned with their future and personal ambition, as the statistical correlation between the probable votes expressed on specific vital issues (national veto, interstate commerce, and slavery, to name only a few) and the marginal effect of units changes in a particular independent variable suggests. The possibility of testing voting preferences is limited, both for conceptual and contingent reasons: as a conceptual reason, strategic bargaining and logrolling tend to obscure the actual vote patterns; the Philadelphia Convention operated under a secrecy principle, and the voting procedure was recorded only in part.

  38. 38.

    Jillson (1981), pp. 598–612; Jillson and Eubanks (1984), pp. 435–458; Riker (1984), pp. 1–16.

  39. 39.

    Farrand (1911) Vol. 1, 86 ff.; Jillson and Eubanks (1984), p. 439.

  40. 40.

    Finkelman (2014).

  41. 41.

    Farrand (1911), Vol. 1, 164 ff.

  42. 42.

    Elster (1993).

  43. 43.

    McGuire (1988), p. 491.

  44. 44.

    Wood (1980), p. 8; Beard (1912), pp. 80f.

  45. 45.

    Buchanan and Tullock (1962) 79 ff.

  46. 46.

    See also Riker (1986).

  47. 47.

    Nash (1950a, b, 1951).

  48. 48.

    Elster (1995), p. 393.

  49. 49.

    Frohlich and Oppenheimer (1984), pp. 3 ff.

  50. 50.

    Roche (1961), pp. 804.

  51. 51.

    Jillson and Eubanks (1984), pp. 435 ff.

  52. 52.

    Jillson and Eubanks (1984), pp. 438 ff. The higher-level of constitutional-making comprises ‘general questions concerning the scope, scale, and form appropriate to government. Will the regime be an aristocratic, democratic, or mixed republic? Will the government have a legislative or an executive focus? Will its legislature be bicameral or unicameral?’. According to Jillson and Eubanks, these questions are ‘less likely to be decided with reference to economic status, social role, or material characteristics of the constitution maker than with reference to his philosophical assumption concerning the interplay among human nature, political institutions, and the good society’.

  53. 53.

    Neumann and Morgenstern (1953). A utility function U: P → ℜ is a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function if there are numbers (u1, …, un) for each of the N outcomes (x1, …, xn) such that for every p ∈ P, U (p) = Pn i = 1 pi…ui. The expected utility function is a way of incorporating in the model a theory of behavior towards risk variance. Under the condition of risk variance, the optimal choice maximizes expected utility, which is given by combining the pertinent utilities and their associated probabilities. The decision maker’s preferences are pinned down over uncertain outcomes.

  54. 54.

    Shapley (1953), pp. 1095 ff.; Mertens and Neyman (1981), p. 53 ff.; Baron and Ferejohn (1989), p. 1181 ff.

  55. 55.

    Bicchieri (1997), p. 2.

  56. 56.

    Binmore (2007), p. 37.

  57. 57.

    Mashaw (1989), pp. 123 ff.

  58. 58.

    Bacharach (2006), p. 163: ‘in coming to frame a situation as a problem ‘for us’, an individual also gains some sense of how likely it is that another individual would frame it in the same way’.

  59. 59.

    Nash (1950a, b, 1951).

  60. 60.

    Binmore (2007), p. 14.

  61. 61.

    Binmore (2007), p. 57.

  62. 62.

    Börgers (1992), p. 163 ff.

  63. 63.

    Aumann (1995), p. 6 ff.; Neumann and Morgenstern (1953).

  64. 64.

    Schelling (1960).

  65. 65.

    Lewis (1969).

  66. 66.

    Binmore (2007), p. 45.

  67. 67.

    McGuire (1988), p. 506.

  68. 68.

    Miller and Knapp (1977), pp. 367 ff.

  69. 69.

    Karp (2016).

  70. 70.

    Jillson and Eubanks (1984), p. 440.

  71. 71.

    Jillson and Eubanks (1984), p. 452; Farrand (1911), Vol. 2, pp. 451–461.

  72. 72.

    Rosenthal (1981), pp. 92 ff.

  73. 73.

    Brest (1980).

  74. 74.

    60 U.S. 393 (1857).

  75. 75.

    199 U.S. 437 (1905).

  76. 76.

    Scalia (1997), p. 22.

  77. 77.

    Brest (1980), pp. 214 ff.; Bennett (1984), p. 456.

  78. 78.

    Lawson and Siedman (2008), p. 73; Barnett (1999), p. 621.

  79. 79.

    Bickel (1986).

  80. 80.

    Bobbitt (1982), p. 26.

  81. 81.

    Elster (2018), pp. 235 ff.

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Acknowledgements

The Author remains grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for sponsoring this research, which is part of a larger project hosted by the University of Heidelberg, Institut für Staatsrecht, Verfassungslehre und Rechtsphilosophie. The Author wishes to express his gratitude to his host, Professor Martin Borowski, for his precious support. Special thanks go to Mauro Barberis, Paolo Comanducci, Pierluigi Chiassoni, Francesco Ferraro, Daniel Oliver Lalana, and Jan R. Sieckmann for their valuable suggestions.

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  1. University of Genova – Tarello Institute, Genova, Italy

    Alessio Sardo

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  1. Department of Legal Sciences “Cesare Beccaria”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Francesco Ferraro

  2. Department of Legal Sciences “Cesare Beccaria”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Silvia Zorzetto

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Sardo, A. (2022). Bargaining in Philadelphia: Constitutional Games, Rational Law-Making, and Originalism. In: Ferraro, F., Zorzetto, S. (eds) Exploring the Province of Legislation. Legisprudence Library, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87262-5_2

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