Extract

This chapter opens a discussion continuing over the next three chapters that refines the challenges faced in reshaping the content of modern democratic constitutions. It considers three different possible starting points for thinking about constitutional content: goals, civic purpose and underlying motivation. It selects motivation as the starting point. It identifies a bundle of motives: material, emotive and normative that reflects the social context of constitution making. It identifies the different ways in which the different motives can be expressed in constitutional provisions. It establishes the importance of bounded rationality in a constitutional context.