Constitutional will vs. popular will
By: Luis Beltrán Guerra G. - 28/01/2024
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In the insightful essay “Machiavelli, the father of modern constitutionalism,” the Colombian philosophy professor Juan Almeyda Sarmiento highlights the determining influence of the Florentine wise man on “the supreme laws,” according to which the most respectable democracies were established: 1 The government is compelled to serve justice and the common good, 2. It must do so through known and stable laws and 3. They will be better assured through the checks and balances of a well-designed “magna carta.” The genius of Nicolas, for Almeyda, “took the theories and experiences of Republican Rome and applied them to his own time.” And this, in his opinion, “transformed the politics of the emerging modality and reconfigured government around the world.”
The assertions of the Colombian philosopher, we must mention, do not seem to take into account the titanic task that corresponded to the Florentine so that his substantial proposals were executed, which led to history adding to his name the meaning of "the spicy words, which They border on rudeness.” A mixture of sagacity and cunning had to be put into practice by “Nicolas”. Not so that he could be understood. Rather, regarding the implementation of his wise theory, today more than ever in full force.
Today's constitutionalism is rather wandering. Not as defining as “the wise man” proposed. Chileans, for example, with a tradition for the stability of “the supreme laws,” have wandered in recent decades between the grammatical forms “approve and reject” and today, hand in hand with a government of young people, in rigor, the result of the overturning of a people in the street cheering flags that had to be heard. To President Piñera, we do not know if Machiavellianly, before the enraged people he came to the proposal of a new “Magna Carta” that seemed to “go from one place to another without stopping at any.”
In Almeida Sarmiento's opinion, constructiveness begins in any society when rulers apply their reason to the structure of the State to ensure better government and better laws. And it thus leads us to remember that today this is still the debate in humanity that the son of Bernardo Machiavelli and Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli once set out to resolve. Lessons that seem to have been interpreted appropriately, as we once wrote with the aim of investigating the reasons why the constitutional success achieved by Walt Disney has not been possible in other societal typologies, in fact a questioning of “human rationality” itself. Presumably, the vocation of the person to obtain the achievements of humanity itself. Basically a questioning of Yuval Noah Harari's assessment of “homo sapiens”, whom the writer considers successful as a result of his “capacity for large-scale cooperation” and guided by money, empire and religions. ”. It will perhaps be an uphill climb that these three myths, or “unifying powers,” as Harari himself calls them, rather than unity, have generated the opposite. Reality, without a doubt, reveals that disunity has not been absent and that fictions (money, empire and religions) have been rather conflictive. Not so in the world of Disney, that is, in that real kind of a true “magical constitutionalism.”
Professor Almeyda also notes, in his excellent research, that “the English, American, and French Revolutions and the entire modern impetus for constitutional reform began with Machiavelli's “Discorsi.” He mentions in the case of the USA John Adams (1787-1788). It is also read that his most recognized work of political philosophy is “The Prince” published in 1532, which conflicted with Catholic doctrines and in whose pages he stated that “effective truth is more important than any abstract ideal.” He phrases that he, perhaps, would utter more vehemently today. And we would not know if he would update the “Prince” to make him much more “Machiavellian”, synonymous as it is read with “cunning” and for some with “perfidy”.
In one of the most stable democracies in the universe, that of the United States, the prominent constitutionalist Laurence Tribe, "emeritus professor at Harvard", has wielded the "Fourteenth Amendment - Section 3 -", whose text is: "No person may be senator or representative in Congress, nor elector of president and vice president, nor hold any office, civil or military, in the United States or in any State, who, having previously taken the oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the States United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, in support of the Constitution of the United States, has participated in an insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to its enemies. But Congress can, by a two-thirds vote of each House, eliminate said disability.” Given Tribe's assessment, the co-director of the Miller Center of History at the University of Virginia, Russell Riley, raises the inconvenience of applying the precept, since it could be understood, by a few Republicans, that the Constitution would be being used to disqualify an opponent And that the same strategy could be used in the same sense with respect to a Democratic candidate. “The formal and the substantial” has been on more than one occasion a duality in the application of the Law and hence it is pertinent to ask: Constitutions vs. your amendments and commendations? This is how we do it and almost daily. But, also, in relation to the incompatibilities that reality entails in terms of asking ourselves about whether the “CONSTITUTIONAL WILL VS THE POPULAR WILL” constitutes unconstitutionality.
Allow us to conclude with the preparation of Professor Juan Almeyda Sarmiento: Professor of the School of Philosophy of the Industrial University of Santander, Bucaramanga, Colombia, Master in Metaphysics (2023) from the University of Brasilia, Brazil, Master in Philosophy (2021) and graduate in Philosophy (2019) from the UIS. He was a scholarship recipient of the Alliances for Education and Training Program (PAEC) Organization of American States (OAS) – Coimbra Group of Brazilian Universities (GCUB). His areas of specialization are contemporary philosophy, political and social philosophy, and psychoanalysis. He is currently working on studies of subjectivity, neoliberalism and the relationship between cinema and society. He is a member of the Charles Morazé research group and the Central-West Laboratory of Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (LA-TEFIP). With it we have enlightened ourselves for this work.
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