¹ Buchanan, James M., ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, Science, 236 (12 06 1987), 1433–6, p. 1433.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

² Buchanan, , ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, p. 1434.Google Scholar

³ Buchanan, , ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, p. 1435, emphases added.Google Scholar

⁴ Buchanan, , ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, p. 1436n.Google Scholar

⁵ Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Brennan, Geoffrey and Buchanan, James M., The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 27–31, 107.Google Scholar Page references to this book will be given in the text in parentheses.

⁷ He and Brennan, say, ‘It is consensus that performs [the] basic normative function’ in their account (p. 98).Google Scholar

⁸ Harsanyi, John C., ‘Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-Taking’, Journal of Political Economy, 61 (1953), 434–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility’, Journal of Political Economy, 63 (1955), 309–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

¹⁰ In the published version of the paper that Brennan and Buchanan cite, Coleman speaks of epistemic and ‘semantic’ usages. (Coleman, Jules L., ‘The Foundations of Constitutional Economies’, pp. 141–55Google Scholar in McKenzie, Richard B., ed., Constitutional Economics (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1984), especially pp. 146–8.)Google Scholar

¹¹ Brennan and Buchanan may be making the same point when they say that ‘Individuals make their evaluations… only as the trading process takes place, and, without trade, there could be no means of determining what value is at all’ (p. 24). The difficulty in concluding that this is their meaning is in knowing who it is who could have ‘no means of determining what value is at all’. They may be saying that I have no means of determining even my own values without trade.

¹² Quoted in Miller, John C., The Federalist Era, 1789–1801 (New York: Harper, 1960), p. 82.Google Scholar Many of his contemporaries must have ranked Hamilton's as among the least trustworthy hands around. Rossiter calls the Constitution ‘only a spider's web of words’ that, upon ratification, still had to be converted ‘into the solid reality of a political system both operational and legitimate’ (Rossiter, Clinton, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 299).Google Scholar

¹³ Hume, David, ‘Of the Original Contract’, pp.465–88Google Scholar in Hume, , Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Classics, 1985; essay first published in 1748).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Buchanan, and Tullock, , The Calculus of Consent.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Madison's frail device is to suppose that ‘assent may be inferred, where no positive dissent appears’. (Madison, James, ‘Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 4 February 1790’, pp. 70–1Google Scholar in Kurland, Philip B. and Lerner, Ralph, The Founders' Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 5 vols, ‘Volume I: Major Themes’, p. 71.)Google Scholar The frailty of the device in his case is that it was invoked less than two years after he had struggled, in the Federalist Papers and in extensive politicking, against strong opposition to get the Constitution ratified.

¹⁶ Hardin, Russell, ‘Does Might Make Right?’ pp.201–17Google Scholar in Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John W., eds, NOMOS 29: Authority Revisited (New York: New York University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁷ See also remarks on pp. 101, 146. For a nearly opposite complaint that even economists object to the use of explanation from self-interest in realms other than market economics, see p. 46.

¹⁸ In a footnote (p. 37), Buchanan takes most credit for this railing.

¹⁹ Black, Duncan, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd edn (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963; first published 1951).Google Scholar

²⁰ Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. and Nidditch, P. H., 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978Google Scholar; first published 1739–40), book 3, passim especially part 2, section 7, pp. 534–9; Rawls, John, ‘Two Concepts of Rules’, Philosophical Review, 64 (1955), 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Hardin, Russell, Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), §21.Google Scholar

²¹ Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, pp. 167–323Google Scholar in Hume, , Enquiries, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. and Nidditch, P. H., 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975Google Scholar; Enquiry first published in 1751), pp. 183–92.Google Scholar

²² They say, ‘The contractarian–constitutionalist position is almost necessarily nonconsequentialist and deontological. Evaluative criteria must be applied to rules or processes rather than to end states or results, at least in any direct sense’ (p. 45). See also p. 100.

²³ Madison, , Federalist, no. 14, p. 131Google Scholar in Rutland, and Lerner, , The Founders' Constitution, vol. 1.Google Scholar

²⁴ Wilson, James, ‘Lectures on Law’, in The Works of James Wilson, ed. by McCloskey, Robert Green, 2 vols (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967Google Scholar, essay first published in 1791), excerpted in Kurland, and Lerner, , The Founders' Constitution, vol. 1, p. 73.Google Scholar

²⁵ They discuss this issue in a section oddly entitled ‘The role of norms’ (pp. 146–9).Google Scholar

²⁶ It is such questions that Brennan and Buchanan pose (pp. 145–6) to set up their discussions of norms and civic religion.

²⁷ This is also the chief interest of Buchanan and Tullock, in The Calculus of ConsentGoogle Scholar and of Downs, Anthony in An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957).Google Scholar

²⁸ Brennan and Buchanan briefly address this issue in a discussion of who will seek public office (p. 64), although here their central concern seems to be with those who seek elective office.

²⁹ Madison, , Federalist, no. 51, pp. 330–1Google Scholar in Kurland, and Lerner, , The Founders' Constitution, vol. 1, p. 330.Google Scholar

³⁰ For their views on taxation, see Brennan, Geoffrey and Buchanan, James M., The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).Google Scholar For briefer statements on inflation and deficit financing, see The Reason of Rules, pp. 90–3 and 93–4.Google Scholar

³¹ They say that ‘the empirical record of the establishment of historical states is essentially irrelevant to the contractarian explanatory argument’ (p. 22).Google Scholar It might not be irrelevant to our understanding of the plausibility of their contractarian program and, especially, their commitment to abstract rules.

³² As Buchanan notes, the Philadelphia ‘convention was one of the few historical examples in which political rules were deliberately chosen’ (Buchanan, , ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, p. 1436).Google Scholar

³³ For further discussion of the fate and role of the constitution, see Hardin, Russell, ‘Why a Constitution?’Google Scholar forthcoming in Grofman, Bernard and Wittman, Donald, eds, The Federalist Papers.Google Scholar