Introduction

Previous chapters have demonstrated how indeterminate legislation can affect policy effectiveness. These chapters in Part Two begged the question: what, if anything, can be done by policymakers to ensure a logic of communication? A typical solution to resolving indeterminacy in one law is to interpret it by reference to another. In most democracies, this is facilitated with a constitution that forms a repository of principles and procedures for clarifying subordinate laws. The UK lacks any codified or entrenched constitutional law. However, this chapter will interrogate the effects of indeterminacies in constitutional laws. If constitutional law is itself indeterminate, subordinate laws can be even more difficult to reconcile to any logic of communication. For a constitution to solve those problems identified in preceding chapters, its meaning has to be plain.

The provisions quoted at the opening of this chapter come, first, from the constitution with the most adjectives and adverbs of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country – that is, Mexico's constitution, with 6,419 adjectives and adverbs – and, second, from the constitution with the greatest proportion of adjectives and adverbs to all other words – that is, Portugal's constitution, where 10.32% of all words are adjectives or adverbs. With these particular provisions, Mexican and Portuguese constitution designers were attempting to manage economic development. This is difficult to achieve with plain language, and reflects ambitions to pursue social-democratic solutions to economic inequalities. Yet, the language is highly indeterminate. Acting on these provisions will create the difficulties of delegation, accountability, coherence and legitimacy identified in the chapters of Part Two.