尋求獨立憲法理論的嘗試——對《繼往以爲序章：中國憲法的制度展開》的批判性述評

An Attempt to Seek an Independent Constitutional Theory: A Critical Review of "Using Past as Prologue: The Institutional Landscape of Constitutional Politics in China”

從實踐上看，憲法包含了一組表面上非常悖謬的特徵。一方面憲法在內容上涉及了公共生活中很多具有道德重要性和爭議性的議題；另一方面，憲法在形式上主要由過去的政治决定和既定的慣例構成。爲何過去的决定會對當下極具重要性的議題具有約束力，這就成了憲法理論無法繞開的棘手難題。田雷教授主張，既然憲法在形式上總意味著一組過去的政治决定，那麽對憲法約束力的說明就必須在憲法實踐脉絡的“內部”，尋求整體上融貫的道德叙事來闡明其約束力，而非從憲法外部援引一般性的道德原則來闡明。這種觀念很難處理憲法實踐脉絡的歷史材料和整體融貫的道德叙事之間的關係，往往出現爲了謀求一種整體融貫的叙事而壓縮剪裁歷史材料的情况。相對來說，“以慣例爲基礎的推論主義理論”要求首先確定特定歷史材料獨立的規範性地位，並以此爲基礎推論式地尋求可能存在的融貫叙事。這就避免了爲了尋求融貫叙事而隨意裁剪歷史的問題，同時也保留了尋求憲法之中融貫叙事的目標，儘管推論主義不再承諾這個目標必然能達到。

In practical terms, the Constitution contains a set of apparently very paradoxical features. On the one hand, the constitution deals with many morally important and controversial topics in public life; on the other hand, it consists mainly of past political decisions and social conventions. The question of why past decisions are binding on issues of great importance in the present becomes a thorny problem that cannot be circumvented by constitutional theory. Prof. Tian Lei argues that since a constitution always formally implies a set of past political decisions, an account of the binding force of a constitution must seek to articulate its binding force by seeking a holistically coherent moral narrative "within" the context of constitutional practice, rather than by invoking general moral principles from outside the constitution. This idea makes it difficult to manage the relationship between the historical materials of constitutional practice and the overall coherent moral narrative, and often results in the compression and tailoring of historical materials in the pursuit of an overall coherent narrative. In contrast, a "convention-based inferentialist theory" requires first determining the independent normative status of particular historical materials and then inferentially seeking a possible coherent narrative on that basis. This avoids the problem of arbitrarily tailoring history in the search for a coherent narrative, while retaining the goal of seeking a coherent narrative in the constitution, although inferentialism no longer promises that this goal will necessarily be achieved.