Electoral-counting compromises institutionalized moral compromises into law

Evidence

In a compromise, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention decided to count five slaves as three Whites. In the mistaken belief that slavery would die out over the next two or three decades, the founders based the Union on racial exclusion, leaving a grievous legacy for future generations to correct (Urofsky, 1988; Wood, 2009). The founders justified their moral compromise as establishing the institutional mechanisms for the eventual abolition of slavery, which they lacked the political power to achieve. However well meaning the intent, subhumanizing an entire group of people as a political strategy officially instills a morally reprehensible public view of that group. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 116

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-disengagement mechanisms Bandura names throughout the book — euphemistic labeling and displacement of responsibility here appear in the founders’ self-justification. — connects to: Formal logic and law serve the status quo once stripped of political content — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 225; Entrenched policy outcomes can be locked in through either electoral or legislative means — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 161; Electoral rules have long served partisan entrenchment across American history — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 83