The American and some other constitutions entrench property rights by requiring super majoritarian voting as a condition for amending or revoking their own provisions. Following Buchanan and Tullock [5], this paper analyzes individuals' interests behind a veil of ignorance, and shows that under some standard assumptions, a (simple) majoritarian rule should be adopted. This result changes if one assumes that preferences are consistent with the behavioral phenomenon known as the "endowment effect." It then follows that (at least some) property rights are best defended by super majoritarian protection. The paper then shows that its theoretical results are consistent with a number of doctrines underlying American Constitutional Law.
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Paper provided by Center for Rationality and Interactive Decision Theory, Hebrew University, Jerusalem in its series Discussion Paper Series with number
dp277.
Length: 24 pages Date of creation: Mar 2002 Date of revision: Publication status: Published in Theory and Decision, 2003, vol. 55, pp. 181-207. Handle: RePEc:huj:dispap:dp277
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