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Publius: The Journal of Federalism 1998 28(2):99-127;
© 1998 by CSF Associates Inc.
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The Iroquois Confederation Constitution: An Analysis

Donald S. Lutz
University of Houston

The Iroquois Confederation was not an influence on the U.S. Constitution, but it is worthy of study as an independently developed political system with the oldest surviving constitution in North America. A systematic institutional analysis of the Great Binding Law, the orally transmitted constitution of the Confederation, reveals, among other things: tribal inequality despite their formal equality under a unanimity rule; a high level of responsiveness despite a nondemocratic, elitist method for selecting leaders; many ancillary institutions for achieving a traditional form of consensus rather than simple majority rule; two means of elevating men to the Confederation Council, each a paradoxical blend of the pre political and the post-traditional; the first use of a formal amendment process in constitutional history; and an underlying "code of imperialism" that, together with the second method of selecting Confederation Council members, transformed a defensive alliance into a potent actor in North American history. Overall, the Confederation institutionally approximated an Aristotelian "mixed regime" which, despite its creation under circumstances the Iroquois describe in Hobbesian terms, was quite libertarian.


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