This introductory chapter addresses the following questions: how should lawmaking authority be allocated among judges, legislators, and executive officials, and how should legal institutions be designed? It evaluates a family of views called epistemic legalism. It then proposes a legal regime referred to as the codified constitution. It attempts to show that, under robust conditions, the limits of reason affirmatively support a larger role for lawmaking by legislatures and executive officials than is allowed under epistemic legalism—emphatically including constitutional lawmaking. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.
Keywords: lawmaking, epistemic legalism, codified constitution, human reason,