"No constitution is or can be perfectly symmetrical, what it can and must be is generally accepted as both fair and usable"
About this Quote
Perfect symmetry is the fantasy of people who want politics to behave like geometry. Ferdinand Mount’s line punctures that craving with the calm authority of someone who’s spent time around constitutions as lived instruments, not museum pieces. “No constitution is or can be perfectly symmetrical” admits what designers of systems often try to hide: power never distributes itself with clean, mirrored balance. History, class, region, religion, empire, and accident all leave fingerprints. A constitution is less an equation than a negotiated settlement with the past.
The pivot is the harder claim: what a constitution “can and must be” is “generally accepted as both fair and usable.” Mount is smuggling in a quietly British sensibility here: legitimacy isn’t produced by theoretical purity but by broad consent and day-to-day function. “Fair” and “usable” are paired on purpose. Fairness without usability becomes sanctimony; usability without fairness becomes efficient domination. The subtext is a warning to reformers who chase elegant redesigns or fetishize checks-and-balances as if symmetry alone could guarantee justice. It’s also a warning to traditionalists: acceptance has to be renewed, not assumed.
Context matters. Writing from a political culture famous for asymmetry - an uncodified constitution, a second chamber that isn’t elected, devolution that’s uneven by nation - Mount frames constitutional health as a matter of stable compromise. The sentence is a defense of the messy middle: not perfection, but durability; not immaculate design, but a public that can live with the bargain.
The pivot is the harder claim: what a constitution “can and must be” is “generally accepted as both fair and usable.” Mount is smuggling in a quietly British sensibility here: legitimacy isn’t produced by theoretical purity but by broad consent and day-to-day function. “Fair” and “usable” are paired on purpose. Fairness without usability becomes sanctimony; usability without fairness becomes efficient domination. The subtext is a warning to reformers who chase elegant redesigns or fetishize checks-and-balances as if symmetry alone could guarantee justice. It’s also a warning to traditionalists: acceptance has to be renewed, not assumed.
Context matters. Writing from a political culture famous for asymmetry - an uncodified constitution, a second chamber that isn’t elected, devolution that’s uneven by nation - Mount frames constitutional health as a matter of stable compromise. The sentence is a defense of the messy middle: not perfection, but durability; not immaculate design, but a public that can live with the bargain.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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