A Research On The Application Of Public Opinion Thought In Bentham's Constitutional Theory

As an research object,public opinion first entered the vision of philosophers and political theorists,which has gradually gone through the research road from speculative to empirical,and abstract right-based to realistic interest-based.Jeremy Bentham(1748-1832)is the most important person in this road transition.As a utilitarian moral philosopher,Bentham keenly observed the close relationship between law and public opinion,and made a novel interpretation different from his contemporaries in his extensive exploration of many grand themes.He was one of the first thinkers to associate public opinion with law and specifically explain it in his constitutional theory,as well as the first person to propose the word public opinion as a normative legal theorist.We can discover the concept of public opinion that is so important to his constitutional theory.Since Bentham's public opinion is serving his utilitarian goal-the greatest happiness of the greatest number-this article calls it utilitarian public opinion thought.In the 17 th and 18 th centuries,utilitarianism had a profound impact on political,legal and economic reforms in Britain and even in Europe and the Americas,and had also received criticism from different sources.In the constant self-correction and development of utilitarianism,people gradually neglected Bentham's doctrine,lacking general and detailed attention to his works,on one hand,it is related to the wide range of fields and the vast volume of writings involve(including more than 50 works published during the lifetime and more than 70,000 original manuscripts left after death),on the other hand,it is also related to his quite technically,obscure written method and the strangeness of his ideas and styles(Montagu,2015).His views on public opinion are piecemeal,scattered in his works such as A Fragment on Government(1776),An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation(1788-1789),Political Tactics(1791),Securities against Misrule(1822-1823),Constitutional Code(1830),and various letters and manuscripts,what are not easy to be known to modern readers,and makes his public opinion thought less systematic and compelling.Based on this,the paper mainly combs and summarizes Bentham's constitutional theory and public opinion thought through literature analysis.The conclusion of this paper is: public opinion is a radical and important factor in Bentham's constitutional theory.In the view of utilitarian Bentham,the one-person-one-vote election does not ensure the ruler is responsible to the ruled,because legal ambiguity is always abused by those who have power,and the bureaucrats and elected legislators who are in power often suppress the public with "evil interests." For the selfishness of self-interest,the ruler in the broader government activities will harm the community good in pursuit of its own evil interests,which is the greatest threat to the democratic system.Therefore,unlike most theorists who tried to expose and avoid the horrible chaos that may be caused by unregulated public opinion,Bentham showed great trust in it and tried to exert the greatest advantage of it.That is: it required the full disclosure of government information in representative democracy,as well as the moral sanctions for the abuse of government power through the pressure of check of open information and the freedom of press.Bentham saw that the only praiseworthy public opinion is the one of protecting the interests of all through the equal exchange of their own interests.Therefore,Bentham was the first thinker to define public opinion from the personal interests of reality,and was also the first theorist who regarded public opinion as equal citizen individuals supervise and check the elected government through public discussion of public information;Bentham founded the common goods on the basis of the majority decision process which the majority of the individual's correct understanding of his own interests and maximized the individual interests.He created an institutional arrangement that used action(rather than ideas)to value public opinion and made appropriate legal and political decisions for real public well-being;He designated the important term of public opinion tribunal,proposed to use it as the actual operational organization of public opinion,which greatly enhanced its importance as a judicial authority that rivaled the courts.Bentham's suggestion was that:the existing system must be thoroughly reformed,the most important thing is to compile a Constitutional Code that can restrain the evil interests of the ruler,and exert the moral deterrent power of public opinion to make up for the shortcomings of formal law.Bentham made public opinion legalized in his mature constitutional work Constitutional Code for the first time,this mean that as a critical reflection force,public opinion can impose constitutional limit on the operation of democratic institutions under constitutional arrangements,it also mean that Bentham had the most extensive interpretation of the people's constructive power;Bentham also highlighted the idea of open government(legislative,executive and judicial)and the idea of freedom of the press,considering that they are the institutional basis for the ethical sanctions of public opinion tribunal to turn into visible actions.This shows that Bentham is an early and fanatical advocate of supervising country;As one of the first theorists to associate public opinion with elections,Bentham also made groundbreaking contributions to the study of public opinion surveys in the 20 th century and the legalization of public opinion.The originality and radicality of Bentham's public opinion thought explained in his constitutional theory far exceeded that of contemporaries.