Science-fictional Future Earth United Earth Constitution

[Raphael]

…or, “Raphael has really strange ideas of what constitutes ‘fun’, chapter 4825”.

Did you ever want to read a really long, really dry, completely fictional legal document? No? Anyway, as an SF future earth conworlding exercise, here is a possible future constitution of a United Earth.

I am not actually proposing this. I used to be a bit into one-worldism back in my teens, but these days, I think that a world state would only practically possible if certain political conditions would be met that, if they would be met, would make the world state itself superfluous. And it would be too much of a risk, anyway.

So this is simply a “What if…” exercise. And it’s pretty incomplete, too. For one thing, I left out the entire basic rights & related legal principles chapter, partly because I’m not entirely sure about this stuff myself, and partly because I think there’ll probably be future developments in cultural and social terms on that front that are basically impossible to predict from our time.

I also left out everything dealing with how territorial matters would be resolved – too much of a can of worms – and most of the stuff related to the administration of elections – I’m too unsure about that matter myself.


EDIT June 15th 2025: The updated version is here: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=96227#p96227

[Raphael]

EDIT June 15th 2025: The updated version is here: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=96227#p96227

[Raphael]

EDIT June 15th 2025: The updated version is here: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=96227#p96227

[Torco]

it's very much the constitution of a liberal, capitalistic, western nation state, formally speaking. and, on the one hand, this is probably by design but I have the feeling that something as big, ambitious and novel the UE would be like a new type of polity? or is this just America conquers the world? it kinda feels like america conquers the world a bit. It's even bicameral in much the same way as the US <or Chile> is.

I love article 37 lmao. it feels like a compromise, which constitutions often are... and probably should be, sometimes.

Art 44 is hilarious. and also terrifying, like the old god Abraxas. it's like "I hereby annex the entirety of reality".

Art 93 is even more terrifying: the entirety of reality governed under D'Hondt? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Art 213 is beautiful, as is the last one. the last one, in particular, sort of promises a story about finding the last "sufficiently well documented copy of this constitution" in order to, legally, render ineffective its de-institution.

[Raphael]

it's very much the constitution of a liberal, capitalistic, western nation state, formally speaking. and, on the one hand, this is probably by design but I have the feeling that something as big, ambitious and novel the UE would be like a new type of polity?

Well, I deliberately left out the Rights section, so in the parts that I did write, there's nothing mandating capitalism, or preventing the Assembly of Groups from passing a law instituting some form of socialism. If I had written the Rights section, I very definitely wouldn't have included a blanket protection of property rights, and I would have included social services-related rights.

or is this just America conquers the world? it kinda feels like america conquers the world a bit. It's even bicameral in much the same way as the US <or Chile> is.

The bicameralism is, to be frank, mostly for show - the Assembly of Places only needs to approve constitutional amendments and those laws that directly affect its own workings; everything else can be passed by the Assembly of Groups alone. The Assembly of Places is basically there to pacify people from smaller countries who might worry about being completely ignored by a 1001-member global legislature.

And, while Chile and the US have presidential systems, this is a parliamentary system. Yes, there's a president who's the head of the executive, but they're basically a parliamentary prime minister in all but name, elected by, and subject to removal by, the Assembly of Groups. Like (and intentionally based on) the post-1994 South African Presidents. And then there's the one year limit, keeping presidents from accumulating too much power.

I love article 37 lmao. it feels like a compromise, which constitutions often are... and probably should be, sometimes.

It is a compromise. The whole part about Religious Special Districts is basically there to avoid the backlash that might happen if someone tried to enforce religious equality in Mecca, or elected government in the Vatican.

Art 93 is even more terrifying: the entirety of reality governed under D'Hondt? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

It beats First Past the Post, IMO. Or, on a really large scale, basically any district/constituency based system.

[Ares Land]

it took some time reading it all -- that's a lot of work and I love fictional constitutions, so congrats! I'm perhaps a little bothered by there being no intermediate levels between United Earth and States/Regions/Provinces... What would become of Chinese provinces, US states -- or for that matter, European nations and their federal subdivisions?

[Raphael]

it took some time reading it all -- that's a lot of work and I love fictional constitutions, so congrats!

Thank you! You love fictional constitutions? I wouldn't have guessed anyone would say that! To be completely honest, there are a few individual lines that I basically copied-and-pasted from the Irish Constitution, but I wrote everything else myself.

I'm perhaps a little bothered by there being no intermediate levels between United Earth and States/Regions/Provinces... What would become of Chinese provinces, US states -- or for that matter, European nations and their federal subdivisions?

In principle, they would all become immediate subdivisions of the United Earth. In practice, there might be some intermediate levels, either as regional agencies of the United Earth or as joint institutions of several states or provinces, but without their own explicit constitutional standing.

There's a reason for Article 112: there would probably be at least a few thousands of subdivisions, so if each one of them gets to send three Members into the Assembly of Places...

[Torco]

Well, I deliberately left out the Rights section, so in the parts that I did write, there's nothing mandating capitalism, or preventing the Assembly of Groups from passing a law instituting some form of socialism. If I had written the Rights section, I very definitely wouldn't have included a blanket protection of property rights, and I would have included social services-related rights.

I mean, fair enough: then again, capitalist constitutions don't go ahead and mandate capitalism either: it just feels like a capitalist-liberal constitution, or inspired by them... also, there's plenty of other possibilities other than capitalism or socialism <especially depending on what we mean by socialism: do we mean like the NHS and relatively high taxes? or do we mean an economy dominated by cooperatives and state owned enterprises where private ownership of means of production is verboten? maybe we just mean city councils control production? either way the dychotomy between capitalism and socialism is very 20th century.

on the assemblies, you're quite right that it's different... we tried to have here a second camera that's less, and not more, powerful than the most representative assembly. alas, the right won and no dice.

The whole part about Religious Special Districts is basically there to avoid the backlash that might happen if someone tried to enforce religious equality in Mecca, or elected government in the Vatican.

vote for me for pope

It beats First Past the Post, IMO. Or, on a really large scale, basically any district/constituency based system.

again, my own biases are at play: here in chile we adopted that system as a replacement for the binominal system and, tbh, it works very much the same: it makes it very hard for independent candidates to get elected, and makes it so there's very many people who get elected with almost no votes: sure, that's by design, but I'm not sure giving political parties more power than voters is so good: then again, this is true in proportion to how much the parties are representative of genuine clusters of opinions amongst voters versus them being interest groups that vie for power and positions. I'm not sure I understand why voting distortion <i.e. some parties getting more seats than their votes, others getting fewer than their share of the vote> is considered good tbh.

But i mean... yeah, even in the future, people adopting ranked voting is probably too much to ask

also, this kinda gave me the itch to flesh out the political system of a half-imagined future polity... imagining the future is so hard, tho, i always feel like a roman imagining the twentieth century and going "they will have such good steel their slaves will *never* be able to break their chains, and their garum comes in exceedingly thin steel bottles"

[Ares Land]

Thank you! You love fictional constitutions? I wouldn't have guessed anyone would say that!

Yeah, fictional politics are always fun

I'm not sure I understand why voting distortion <i.e. some parties getting more seats than their votes, others getting fewer than their share of the vote> is considered good tbh.

The idea is to arrange matters so there's a majority.

In practical terms I get the point of having strong majorities and stable government. Though on philosophical grounds I object to the idea of giving a government a strong mandate when there's clearly no consensus on what should be done.

also, this kinda gave me the itch to flesh out the political system of a half-imagined future polity... imagining the future is so hard, tho, i always feel like a roman imagining the twentieth century and going "they will have such good steel their slaves will *never* be able to break their chains, and their garum comes in exceedingly thin steel bottles"

I'd love to see that as well.

Science-fictional politics is difficult. That said, if a Roman from the Late Republic had assumed politics would be the same as in his day... he wouldn't have been far wrong. The basic issues are still pretty much the same: wealth redistribution and conservatives perceiving moral degeneracy everywhere.

[hwhatting]

I'm not sure I understand why voting distortion <i.e. some parties getting more seats than their votes, others getting fewer than their share of the vote> is considered good tbh.

The idea is to arrange matters so there's a majority.

In practical terms I get the point of having strong majorities and stable government. Though on philosophical grounds I object to the idea of giving a government a strong mandate when there's clearly no consensus on what should be done.

Strong majorities and stable government are an important aspect of the Post-WW II German constitution. It's full of so-called "lessons from Weimar" - remedying structural features of the Weimar constitution that are thought to have destabilized the Weimar Republic and led to the Nazi regime. One of them was lots of small parties leading to unstable governments. Weimar went through 19 cabinets and 12 chancellors in 14 years*. It's debatable how much the the structural elements of the constitution were responsible for the failure of Weimar (as against the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, destabilisation by the radical right and left, the fact that arny and administrative elites never fully accepted the Republic, plus the world economic crisis and mass unemployment), but the creators of the 1949 Grundgesetz acted very much in a spirit of "if that's how Weimar did it, we'll do it differently".

*NB: In that overview you'll find 20 cabinets and 13 chancellors, because they include Hitler; this can be argued for and against - Hitler was elected chancellor under the Weimar constitution, which he never formally abolished, but I exclude him because most historians generally count the date of his assuming the Chancellorship as the end of the Weimar Republic and the begin of the Nazi regime. OTOH, the first three cabinets were in or came into office before the constitution was approved, but that period is usually still counted as part of the Weimar Republic.

[Raphael]

The idea is to arrange matters so there's a majority.

In practical terms I get the point of having strong majorities and stable government. Though on philosophical grounds I object to the idea of giving a government a strong mandate when there's clearly no consensus on what should be done.

Strong majorities and stable government are an important aspect of the Post-WW II German constitution. It's full of so-called "lessons from Weimar" - remedying structural features of the Weimar constitution that are thought to have destabilized the Weimar Republic and led to the Nazi regime. [...] the creators of the 1949 Grundgesetz acted very much in a spirit of "if that's how Weimar did it, we'll do it differently".

German Wikipedia says that the Bundestag only used D'Hondt until 1985, then Hare/Niemeyer until 2008, and afterwards Sainte-Laguë/Schepers:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag ... 6_bis_2011

[hwhatting]

German Wikipedia says that the Bundestag only used D'Hondt until 1985, then Hare/Niemeyer until 2008, and afterwards Sainte-Laguë/Schepers:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag ... 6_bis_2011

Yep. I was talking about the principles behind the constitution and the choices of the Federal Republic at its foundation; D'Hondt is not in the Grundgesetz, but it was chosen back then for the same reasons. Obviously, after a couple of decades, our political system became a bit more ready to experiment without fearing that every deviation from the principles of 1949 will bring a repeat of the Nazis.

[Torco]

The idea is to arrange matters so there's a majority.

In practical terms I get the point of having strong majorities and stable government. Though on philosophical grounds I object to the idea of giving a government a strong mandate when there's clearly no consensus on what should be done.

But having fake majorities is like... I don't know, if stability's the aim, let's just throw away all the votes and not tell anyone: then they believe they're in a democracy, which keeps them more or less content, but the rulers just keep ruling. stable!

[Ares Land]

Strong majorities and stable government are an important aspect of the Post-WW II German constitution.

An interesting case of the opposite reasoning was France's IVth Republic (the post WWII constitution that was replaced later on.)
It was deliberately designed not to provide strong majorities because everyone was afraid the communists would win.

[Ares Land]

The idea is to arrange matters so there's a majority.

In practical terms I get the point of having strong majorities and stable government. Though on philosophical grounds I object to the idea of giving a government a strong mandate when there's clearly no consensus on what should be done.

But having fake majorities is like... I don't know, if stability's the aim, let's just throw away all the votes and not tell anyone: then they believe they're in a democracy, which keeps them more or less content, but the rulers just keep ruling. stable!

Yep, that's correct. But I don't know if anyone figured out a solution for that problem.

The problem is, what happens when you get a legislature with no majority? Who forms a government? What happens if the four major parties in the legislature are the Socialist Worker's Party, the Conservatives, the Libertarian Party and the Aryan Brotherhood, all within a percentage point of each other? (Though of course an exaggeration, it's not that far removed from the political landscape here in Europe.)
I'm tempted to say, let them work out a compromise. But it has issues as well. Typically the Socialist Workers, the Conservatives and the Libertarians will agree on vague social democracy. Which from a certain point of view is democratic (it's something 75% of voters can sort of agree with) -- and from another isn't democratic at all (essentially the policies are something nobody really voted for except a subset of the Conservatives).
Plus what always ends up happening is that someone strikes a deal with the Aryan Brotherhood and you get fascist ministers. .

Another solution is to let the Socialists and the Conservatives take turns isn't that awful; at least voters get something kinda close to what they believe in about half of the time. Plus you get to kick out incompetents faster I think.
In a political system that values coalition, a smart deal maker can hang around basically forever. The Christian Democrats were masters of coalition building. Check out their history in Italy.


EDIT: Oh, I forgot about the third option, which hasn't really been tested: would it be so terrible to have no majority and no government when there's no clear consensus on what to do?
This happens in Belgium from time to time and honestly it didn't turn out that bad for the Belgians.

[Raphael]

EDIT: Oh, I forgot about the third option, which hasn't really been tested: would it be so terrible to have no majority and no government when there's no clear consensus on what to do?
This happens in Belgium from time to time and honestly it didn't turn out that bad for the Belgians.

Well, in Belgium, they generally keep the previous government sort of in charge in a caretaker function. Which is fine if the previous government was more or less ok, probably less fine if it wasn't.

Anyway, that won't happen under this constitution - in the last ballot of a presidential (or, for that matter, Speaker) election, there are only two candidates left, and whichever one gets more votes wins.

[Ares Land]

Oh, an interesting point is that despite the title of President, this is essentially a parliamentary constitution and the president is what we'd usually call a prime minister/chancellor.
(Interesting also is that you leave out the ceremonial head of state)

So I wonder what would happen in case of a hung Assembly of Groups.

(EDIT: during the IVth French Republic, the president was elected by the legislature. In one case it took eight fourteen rounds! Though the president was a figurehead -- the président du conseil -- a title usually translated as 'premier' I believe - actually ran thing but the process was even more messy.)
(EDIT: oh, I like the constructive motion of no confidence you have)

[Raphael]

Oh, an interesting point is that despite the title of President, this is essentially a parliamentary constitution and the president is what we'd usually call a prime minister/chancellor.

As I said, I got the idea from the post-1994 South African setup.

(Interesting also is that you leave out the ceremonial head of state)

Two points on that: First, I generally prefer parliamentary to presidential systems - I mostly agree with the late Juan Linz on that matter, and I've observed the last 14 years in the USA. But second, I don't really see the point of the ceremonial head of state. Those seem to hang around mainly either because there's a monarchy that people aren't willing to abolish (yet), or, in a parliamentary republic, because people simply didn't get the idea of having a parliamentary system without a ceremonial head of state.

And for those people living under the constitution during its early years who were previously living under system without a head of state/head of government distinction, getting used to such a distinction might be simply very confusing.

So I wonder what would happen in case of a hung Assembly of Groups.

Well, someone will get elected President - even if just with a plurality. And they'll be able to appoint a Cabinet just fine - no need for anyone's approval on that. But they might run into trouble when trying to pass a legislative agenda.

[Ares Land]

Is the presidential election a two round system?

[Raphael]

Is the presidential election a two round system?

It's an up-to-six-rounds system. In each round, the candidate who comes last is thrown out. If there are more than seven candidates in the first round, than in that round, all candidates except the top six get thrown out. To quote:

ARTICLE 104

In the election for Speaker of the Assembly of Groups, a candidate shall need the votes of a majority of all members of the Assembly of Groups to be elected,‭ ‬and if,‭ ‬in a round of voting,‭ ‬no candidate achieved such a majority,‭ ‬another round of voting shall take place in which the candidate with the lowest number of votes in the previous round of voting shall no longer be a candidate,‭ ‬and if, in the first round of voting, more than six candidates received votes, but no candidate received the votes of a majority of all members of the Assembly of Groups, only the six candidates who received the most votes shall be candidates in the second round of voting, but if only two candidates remain in a round of voting,‭ ‬the candidate who receives more votes shall be the winner of the election,‭ ‬and the Assembly of Groups may,‭ ‬by law,‭ ‬provide for the case that two or more candidates received the same number of votes.‭

[...]

ARTICLE 127

The Assembly of Groups shall elect the President, with the Chief Justice of the United Earth or another judge designated by the Chief Justice of the United Earth presiding, in the same manner as that prescribed for the Speaker of the Assembly of Groups by Article 104 of this Constitution.