The spirit of the laws

What Hacker News says

1. triplesecSep 2020
   An incomplete but useful list of classics might be the list following. You may wish to start with wikipedia entries on them, or other sources, but reading the texts themselves is useful!

   Plato: The Republic

   Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics; and Politics

   Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan John Locke: Two Treatises of Government

   Rousseau: The Social Contract

   Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws De Toqueville: Democracy in America

   Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto; and Das Kapital.

   JS Mill: On Liberty (the classic Utilitarian Enlightenment work)

   John Rawls: A Theory of Justice (A hugely important work on rights and principles of political decisionmaking)

   Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State and Utopia (a right-wing / libertarian oriented response to Rawls)

   Michael Sandel: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (critique of liberalism and introducing communitarianism)

   Show morethread
2. andrewjlSep 2020
   > Security theater really

   Use of this phrase in this context indicates either a naive or incomplete understanding of the constitutional order, i.e. how government works in practice as opposed to as an idealism, which is the foundation for understanding constitutional governance and it's practices. Reading Hobbes as well as Montesquieu, particularly the Spirit of Laws should dispel the notion of security theater in a pejorative sense. Also, unless you have some special insight, you cannot for sure say what has been prevented. Therefore any speculation on "true purposes" is just that, speculation.

   > Bad actions are bad regardless of the flag they drape themselves in or any fallacious affinity that assumes what is liked by an actor on behalf of us is good for us.

   I'm in full agreement there. I'm grateful to live in a society where the government can be held to account, both legally and via elections. Not everyone is so lucky.

   Show morethread
3. pfrazeMar 2018
   Not wholly on topic, but for some added depth to that "love or fear" dynamic, I suggest reading Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws." He analyzes different forms of government (democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, and despotism) and their animating principles. For democracy, it's virtue. For monarchy, it's honor. For despotism, it's fear. It's a much more thought-provoking look at how authority works in governance.

   Montesquieu also described separation of powers in the same book [1]

   1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Montesqui...

   Show morethread
4. jacobolusJul 2010
   > Are you trying to run a society full of social benefits (handouts) or a society of individual accomplishments?

   Neither is a good characterization (both are shrill bullshit buzzwords intended in this context to limit discussion).

   Trying to run a society with reasonable physical infrastructure (transportation, public utilities, public health, etc.), a functioning economy, a low unemployment rate, a decent standard of living, a lack of structural violence, a support for individual freedoms, protections against fraud and abuse of information asymmetries, a legal framework under which to peacefully resolve disputes, an ability to respond to disasters and foreign invasions, a government which is responsive to the changing needs and circumstances of its citizens and responsive at a local level to local differences, etc.

   * * *

   The why is in my opinion best described in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and Madison/Hamilton/Jefferson’s Federalist Papers (and you might look at Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, etc. too if you’re feeling extra ambitious). The complexities are somewhat longer and more involved than is appropriate for this venue.

   If you haven’t read it, Tocqueville’s book is truly fantastic, highly recommended to anyone interested in democracy or American government, and just about as relevant today as anything written since.

   Show morethread
5. rayinerOct 2025
   It doesn’t raise any such question because “the executive power” refers to a pre-existing concept. Article II starts: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The use of the definite article “the” without any textual antecedent basis indicates the term refers to a pre-existing concept. In contrast, the use of “a” to refer to the “President” indicates that concept is further defined in the document.

   In 1787, “the executive power” was a well understood concept in political theory. The 1653 constitution of the Commonwealth of England had a concept of separation of powers between the legislative and executive. Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690), and the 1777 English translation of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws use the actual term "executive power" dozens of times each.

   This is consistent with Article III, which mentions the “judicial power,” but doesn’t mention most of the functions of a court. It doesn’t need to—“the judicial Power” is a reference to a preexisting concept.

   The Constitution’s vesting clauses are like the sentence “this operating system runs the virtual memory pager and file system in separate processes.” You know I’m talking about a microkernel without my specifying any further details because the sentence uses well known computer science concepts.

   Moreover, whatever “the executive Power” entails, it must always be “vested in a President of the United States.” Congress can alter the extent of “the executive Power” by law, but it can’t take that executive Power—including the power to faithfully execute the law—and give it to someone else.

   Show morethread
6. HaZeustFeb 2023
   The idea of "Checks and Balances" was coined by Montesquieu in his "The Spirit of the Laws" treatise, where it is justified as "balanced forces of equal leverage amongst one another having an embedded tension against each other".

   The problem is, despite the Founding Fathers' near-fetishization of Montesquieu's work, and the fact that Checks and Balances are a genuinely good idea, the Founding Fathers weren't true to it. In a country of three branches (Legislative, Executive, Judiciary), it is absolutely paramount that the installment of each branch's authority is independent from the actions of another. Obviously, this didn't happen: Congress itself is THE delegate to assigning the President of the Executive - of whom decides his cabinet (which is also meant to be a Check and Balance to Congress), and Congress (and the President it chooses) not only votes on the Supreme Justices of the Judiciary - but Congress also has the power to ordain any court inferior to the Supreme Court.

   This creates a system where Congress seats its utmost authorities intended to act as its checks and balances, and it doesn't work.

   Show morethread