15 - Constitutional Directives and the Duty to Govern Well

Summary

Liberal constitutional discourse has been dominated by a proceduralist, acontextual, universalising worldview. This Rawlsian vision of constitutionalism castigates thick, substantive, moral commitments (other than fundamental rights) in constitutions as illiberal and unwise, at best to be tolerated as minor deviations only when absolutely unavoidable. In practice, however, the ideal of proceduralist constitutionalism is approximated only by a handful of liberal democratic states, arguably the United States and Australia.¹ Many other (sufficiently or aspirationally) liberal-democratic states not only include thick moral commitments in their constitutions, tasking their governments with the duty to govern well, but also specify various facets of (what they believe to be required by) good governance.

Jeff King has characterised such thick moral commitments as constitutional ‘mission statements’.² An important, but much-ignored, form of these thick commitments is a set of provisions I will call ‘constitutional directives’ or simply ‘directives’.