Butler Shaffer on constitutions

Formal constitutions were written, presuming to create a state by contract, in the collective name of “We the people.” In the American version, political authority was to be disbursed among three major branches, with the legislative branch to enjoy sovereign power; a proposition that would make it difficult – if not impossible – for an individual to enjoy unchecked authority. Coupled with the illusion that the exercise of power could be restrained by words written on parchment, it was believed that reasonable persons could therefore trust state power. That some of the most repressive actions of the Soviet Union were conducted under a written constitution loosely modeled on the American one, should disabuse anyone of the thought that governmental powers could be restrained by words.

~ Butler Shaffer, "The Myth of the Constitution," LewRockwell.com, April 5, 2017

USSR Constitution Day
1949