It Didn't Work Like That.

Over to the Volokh Conspiracy some lawyer or another waxes all poetical about some other lawyer's discussion of the Roman Republic's constitution and the Roman Republic's political economy.  The problem is Posner seems to think that what historians know about the Roman Republic's constitution norms bears any relationship to the actually existing Roman Republic's political practices.  Syme pointed out lo these many years ago that this wasn't the case.  Even worse, it seems that Posner wants to use the discussion of series of idealized abstractions as a means of promoting his preferred, it seems to me, economic order. And there, quite frankly, you have it.  Two lawyers claiming to have competence over several different disciplines trying hard to make everyone think that everything ought to be about fewer regulations and more rich folks.  Posner et alia can't rely on historians for their history because if they did all the various historical fictions on which they base their claims would collapse.  Sort of like Originalism, which is only coherent if you turn the founding fathers into the founding Scalia.