First it felt important to define what a constitution should accomplish. This is what AI says: “it serves as the foundational legal document that establishes a government’s structure, defines its powers, and protects fundamental rights.”
Over the weeks, ideas have slowly been added to the AI list and it has become this (current) list:
Govt structure and processes.
The limits to the govts power.
The rights of citizens.
A reset plan for the entire govt (similar to how the creation of LL should be happening via idea presentation on the forum and then modifying the idea until a consensus builds), so that at a point in the future when the world has changed and the institutions of the past are no longer relevant, citizens can re-write their constitution and how every institution functions and do it in a very calm and non-revolutionary manner.
Explanations for everything written so that future generations can understand the thought processes used in creating the constitution and any institutions described in it. And this will give them a better opportunity to improve or re-write the constitution in the future.
The focus stays on legally defensible concepts.
Actively trying to avoid useless words and sentences that do not contribute towards legally defensible concepts and are subconsciously designed to convey how smart the writers are. The current draft of the LL Constitution contains a great deal of this type of language. I believe the US Constitution’s 1st and 2nd amendments are the perfect examples of constitution parts that were written well enough to have mostly survived for 250 years (though they could have been written even better if they knew then what we know now) and so they have been relatively legally defensible.
It is a great help to have all the constitutions on one website with the constituteprojectDOTorg and so I have slowly been going thru a few countries constitutions (mostly Iceland and Finland) and when I see anything I like or strongly disagree with, I will copy-paste it into my own draft document.
Eventually, once I get all the concepts into my draft, I will go back through it and re-write things for maximum clarity and legal defensibility and probably re-arrange the order in whatever way is best. But this probably won’t happen until I go through 10-20 of the countries’ constitutions
It’s always “nice” to experience organised (with processes) and responsive (communicative) government like the Estonian one (first hand experience from e-residency & running company there ;-)).
I’d like to see LiberLand arrive on the same (or higher) lever in 2026.
Yeah it is tough to know where to start. That’s why I am beginning with going thru other constitutions first and pulling out what I like and want to keep or hate and want to ban. I am specifically looking for differences in the Iceland and Finland govt structures versus the US.
The basic 3 institutions in the US federal govt might be okay to keep in a general sense. It might be just a re-writing of some of the details that needs to happen; like no lifetime terms for supreme court justices, no 50 year runs for Congress, no presidents or other officials with an allegiance to an outside hierarchy.
That theory about the SES has changed my thinking. Now it seems the only way to do it is to limit all govt workers to maybe 12 years in any govt job (hired) and then 12 total years in elected positions.
Though this could still give them 24 working years in high positions in the govt, and maybe that’s still too much. Not sure.
Your SES theory is sound I am still not sure how well that would work in Liberland given the extremely small population. I will say though that gov employees cannot be full time and I would try to frame it in a way that all gov employees except for diplomats and possibly a small handful others outside of elected positions must be contracted like what us Americans would call 1099 workers.
Yeah, although the 1099 contract workers bring in a whole other layer of complexity because you can’t strictly hold contractors to standards like you can if they are an employee. Isn’t the whole Minnesota scandal going on right now because the govt, on paper, “contracted out” services to NGOs?
I’m actually working on a piece in my constitution that tries to limit how the govt can dish out money. I don’t want them just trying to do everything via a 3rd party business where we have no accountability of the money. Although, now that I’m reading my own words, maybe if we fix the money transparency and accountability system, then the govt can do most things via 3rd party contracted companies and have very few employees…
The money and transparency is key to I think to a good governance period, once that issue can be resolved then almost everything can be done via 3rd party. Do you remember seeing my transparency and accountability draft law I put on the forum mo the ago?
I just reviewed it, it is definitely solid and useful, and should certainly be put in place in the US. But how would you solve the NGO problem? This NGO stuff looks like it might turn into the scandal of our lifetimes if it keeps trickling into other states and if high level politicians get arrested from it.
I don’t know if I’m splitting hairs on this topic but would you consider NGO’s and private companies contracted to do certain tasks be different or the same? I know this has become a very thorny issue here in America and NGO charity the slush funds must stop somehow.
Ok I see where you are coming from but and I hate doing this to you but the classic “who will build the roads” argument rings in my head over this issue or the classic “mafia owning the garbage businesses” how would you combat their arguments?
I still think privately leased highway systems would be a good solution. The Indiana Toll Road is a textbook example of how such a system can operate as they have been doing it for years now.