I like a bicameral system with one assembly being chosen by sortition. Say, expand the US House dramatically, and fill the seats by sortition. I just don’t think completely replacing all representatives with random citizens is a great idea. I don’t think you can train people to be policy experts fast enough for that to really be viable in a large modern nation.
Maybe fill the Senate by sortition from just lawyers, and maybe past Representatives, so you retain some level of expertise in the legislature.
This is very similar to how we do it with juries; a body of the people to stamp/implement the laws written by congress and rules for reading them from judges. I think it’s an improvement.
But I do want to vouch for how teachable people can be. And I think it really changes how we fund/run/manage education when ‘functioning in the senate’ is a mandatory skill.
As teachable as they may be, legislating a country of a third of a billion people is complicated. How long does it take to teach constitutional law to a layperson? Not to mention the time to teach them the other relevant knowledge to draft functional policy. Do their terms include that education time, or do they have a preparatory teaching period before their term actually begins?
Then there’s the issue of installing the teachers themselves. Clearly they can’t be assigned by broad sortition themselves. Are they appointed? By who? How do you prevent them from becoming a sort of shadow government, influencing representatives with their own biases and agendas?
I like sortition in principle, but it raises its own questions. Like I said, I like the idea of an upper house randomly selected from those who pass the bar in their states. It’s not a perfect solution, but there may be something workable there.
I like a bicameral system with one assembly being chosen by sortition. Say, expand the US House dramatically, and fill the seats by sortition. I just don’t think completely replacing all representatives with random citizens is a great idea. I don’t think you can train people to be policy experts fast enough for that to really be viable in a large modern nation.
Maybe fill the Senate by sortition from just lawyers, and maybe past Representatives, so you retain some level of expertise in the legislature.
This is very similar to how we do it with juries; a body of the people to stamp/implement the laws written by congress and rules for reading them from judges. I think it’s an improvement.
But I do want to vouch for how teachable people can be. And I think it really changes how we fund/run/manage education when ‘functioning in the senate’ is a mandatory skill.
As teachable as they may be, legislating a country of a third of a billion people is complicated. How long does it take to teach constitutional law to a layperson? Not to mention the time to teach them the other relevant knowledge to draft functional policy. Do their terms include that education time, or do they have a preparatory teaching period before their term actually begins?
Then there’s the issue of installing the teachers themselves. Clearly they can’t be assigned by broad sortition themselves. Are they appointed? By who? How do you prevent them from becoming a sort of shadow government, influencing representatives with their own biases and agendas?
I like sortition in principle, but it raises its own questions. Like I said, I like the idea of an upper house randomly selected from those who pass the bar in their states. It’s not a perfect solution, but there may be something workable there.