Leonid Sirota

Хай живе вільна Україна!

Marxists and Postliberals/Schmittians share a theme in presuming themselves to have identified some set of "internal contradictions" of (classical) liberalism and capitalism. They then proceed as if their diagnosis is its own proof of the inevitability of liberal capitalism's decline, whereupon either Marxism or Postliberalism will replace it as the new and true paradigm of socio-political-economic organization in the world. There are several problems with this line of thinking. First, it almost never correctly diagnoses the alleged "internal contradictions" and especially not on the economic front, which is where they usually focus this claim. Marxists proceed from their own distinctive theory of "surplus value" and center the economic unit on their own proprietary theory of class interests. But that theory is mistaken in its foundational premises about how it assesses economic value, and its unit of analysis - class consciousness - is not a coherent organizing mechanism for economic behavior (mainly due to Olsonian freeridership). They then propose policies that assume their own premises to be correct but that fail because of these errors. And when that failure happens, they try to compensate by brute-forcing their policies into existence with predictable results. Postliberals similarly proceed from an ill-defined appeal to poorly-understood Aristotelian pronouncements about "justice" and the "common good" in economic affairs, but do so without realizing that they're baking their own normative beliefs about these concepts into their premises. This leads them to resurrect arguments in the economic space that are every bit as obsolete as celestial sphere theory is to astronomy. The result is a value-laden preference for medieval economic beliefs rooted in Postliberal aesthetic distaste for what they call "consumerism." They then propose economic policies that are not only wholly unsuited to today, but mired the world in long periods of economic stagnation prior to the industrial revolution and great enrichment. In neither case is the prescriptive end the inevitable successor to liberal capitalism that the Marxists and Postliberals purport it to be. It's just a circular conclusion that they've both reached through unshakeable appear to their own faulty premises and misdiagnoses of things in the economic space that they each dislike and do not understand.

The constitution also, of course, provides for its own amendment, including in relation to "the office of the Queen". So long as one is willing to work within these procedures, one is loyal to the constitution, and @jkenney's contention to the contrary is both vile and daft.

The constitution, in turn, enshrines both the freedoms of opinion and of speech, and equality. It is those who would silence Canadians on account of the circumstances of their birth who are disloyal to it, rather merely mistaken, as sincere republicans are.

I am a naturalized citizen. I am also, as it happens, a monarchist. But I reject—on ethical as well as on legal grounds—this idea that I am a second-class Canadian who is not entitled to the same range of opinions that is open to people who are, I suppose, my superiors by birth.

I try to make this point to my judicial review/public law students, and here: doubleaspect.blog/2022/10/25/sta….

New post corporatelawacademic.wordpress.com/2026/03/27/ple…

[Keith E. Whittington] On Scholarly Engagement ift.tt/d5I1gMC

ICYMI: My analysis of the Supreme Court's latest pronouncements on constitutional interpretation, which contain precious little wisdom. doubleaspect.blog/2026/03/24/the…

Link: doubleaspect.blog/2026/03/24/the…

New post: the Supreme Court of Canada judges had a lot to say about constitutional interpretation in the recent Taylor case, and not much of it was very good. Link below.

@HRHJohn Good point. It doesn't bode well for the Bill 21 case

@DoubleAspect It makes me wonder what decisions are in the hopper. Perhaps it is too soon or inconvenient for the court to commit to textualism.

ICYMI: The Supreme Court of Canada discussed constitutional interpretation at length in a decision last month; I summarize the opinions and discuss the textual aspects of the decision here: doubleaspect.blog/2026/03/23/mov…

Link: doubleaspect.blog/2026/03/23/mov…. Analysis of the methodological arguments in the majority and minority opinions will follow in a separate post.

New post: what the various opinions in the SCC's recent Taylor case have said about constitutional interpretation, and why as a textual matter Kasirer and Jamal JJ are right, and the majority and Rowe J are wrong. Link below.

The perennial appeal of nationalism and socialism shows how broken human nature really is.

Mancini on Textualism in Canada, legaltheoryblog.com/2026/03/11/man… - Mark Mancini (Thompson Rivers University – Faculty of Law) has posted “Text as Anchor” in Statutory Interpretation (Forthcoming, Canadian Bar Review) on SSRN.

@Boblowsky It's a Superior Court judge, so the Canadian Judicial Council would have jurisdiction over a complaint against him.

@DoubleAspect Don't count on it. Only a decisive intervention of the Quebec Judicial Council ("Conseil de la magistrature du Québec") will rid us of this judge...

Looks like a first Canadian judgment that is full of AI hallucinations. If so, I hope Geoffroy J has the good sense to resign, and quickly. lapresse.ca/actualites/jus…

1936: A New York bill would ban Radio from answering questions related to licensed professions like law. (via our substack newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/nyc-once-ban…)

I want to up the ante on this. If you have a large document collection, I will digitize it for you, for free (you pay for inference), on one condition: that we make the data publicly available immediately.