Political & Legal institutions (Political institutions & systems)

Political & Legal institutions (Political institutions & systems)

1. Product of human mind

2. Foundational ideas

3. Not fixed and unquestionable

   • Evaluate and/or change them

4. In the U.S.A., founders were distinguished by (their own values)

   • Wealth
   • Political connections
   • Military service
   • Things they wanted the government to embody or achieve
     • They looked to:
       • Plato
       • Cicero
       • Locke
       • Hume
       • Rousseau
       • Montesquieu

5. Our ideals and values

   • Do and shape political values
   • Identify problems with institutions
   • Think how change might help and achieve those values

6. Why should we have a State? Why legal and political institutions?

   • 4 answers have been considered taken from different approaches (Law, Economics, Psychology, Political Science...)
     • Happiness (peace, stability, human flourishing)
     • Justice (Utilitarian views: all needs met to allow the exercise of the 10 capabilities of human beings)
       • Libertarian Conception of Justice
       • John Rawls (most influential view)
     • Equality
     • Freedom (negative and positive)
       • State as threat to individual freedom
       • State as necessary element of freedom for people