essay on unwritten rule

More From Forbes

Why the unwritten rules may be most important.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Remote work reduced opportunities for chance hallway or water cooler conversations, which often lead ... [+] to incidental learning.

It is lonely at the top. Senior leaders achieved the highest ranks within their organization often due to hard work, recognized accomplishments and deep-rooted networks. Once they get to the top level, they are often isolated, shielded from the truth of what is happening in the trenches. They get half-truths and omissions.

What about on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder? How do they share information, perspectives and serendipitous conversations that lead to innovation?

Innovation commences by seeing the gaps in people’s thinking and making those connections. What opportunities are there for information to flow? Are there clogs and detours in knowledge sharing? Do people have ample opportunities to seek out the gaps and make connections?

While there are multiple benefits to remote work, an issue of contention is the lack of chance hallway or water cooler conversations, which often lead to incidental learning. New employees, especially junior ones, will be unable to connect with more experienced employees and develop relationships. We need to reconsider how we are redesigning our work.

Work relationships matter

Join any organization and you will be handed documents, manuals, playbooks, handbooks, standard operating procedures and websites to reference. It is referred to as explicit knowledge —information and ideas which are documented. This is critical as it teaches you what to do, how to do it and where to go to solve problems.

There is another type of knowledge that is equally, and if not more important, that of tacit knowledge , the traditions, cultures, insights and mental models that are often subconscious and in our minds, but are an integral part of the tapestry and culture of the organizations. It is not codified and you can only access tacit knowledge when there is trust.

Best Travel Insurance Companies

Best covid-19 travel insurance plans, building ties.

Ties are the relationships between people. If we have strong connections, we build trust. It is with those with whom we have strong connections that we can turn for assistance and support. We build strong ties with those who understand and can empathize with our situation.

Tacit knowledge, the type where a hidden curriculum of unwritten rules and traditions are shared, is more likely exchanged with those we know well and trust; with those, we have strong ties. The downside is when you know each other well, you are less likely to develop new ideas, as you tend to discuss topics with which you are familiar.

As we redesign the future of work, we must consider the role of how knowledge is transferred among people. In her new book, Redesigning Work , London Business School professor and member of the Thinkers50 top management thinkers ranking, Lynda Gratton, outlines a four-step process for redesigning work.

Understand what matters

Test your assumptions and collect critical data about your employees and organization. Ask yourself these questions:

Which skills, networks and jobs are crucial for productivity?

How does knowledge flow within the organization?

What do employees want from work and the company?

Reimagine the future

Once you have a basic understanding of what really matters, how can you reimagine work to leverage this knowledge? Gratton suggests the following ideas:

Create an office space where conversation flows, and incidental learning can naturally happen.

Make the home a source of healthy living and working.

Consider how focus and coordination can be supported by the way we structure the working hours.

Model and test ideas

When you have a hypothesis, it is time to test it against multiple variables. Ask yourself these questions:

Will the model be relevant and useful in the short, medium and long term?

Will the model work to aid in skill transitions?

Is the model equitable and fair to employees across the country?

Act on your model and create new ways of working

Work to inculcate the new model into the practice and culture of the company.

Create a practice that engages people with the design choices and makes them agents of change, thereby being part of the process.

“What Lynda Gratton has always been concerned about is the human dimension of business. She constantly reminds us that we are social beings first, and business people second. She has championed the shift from competition to collaboration as the economic imperative,” shares Des Dearlove, the cofounder of Thinkers50 which ranks the top management thinkers in the world.

As we consider the future of work and redesign our physical spaces and opportunities for human interactions, Lynda Gratton’s ideas create a framework to test assumptions, learn best practices and take a giant leap into the future.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Why You Should Write Down Your Company’s Unwritten Rules

• Karen Niovitch Davis

What goes unsaid can have a profound influence on employees’ actions.

Unwritten rules and ways of doing things — both good and bad — are ingrained in the corporate world. Often, these norms become so enmeshed in company culture that leaders don’t even think about them. But if a company’s norms aren’t regularly revisited to ensure they align with the organization’s goals — and if leaders aren’t careful about how their behavior contributes to them — they can morph from a positive force to a destructive one. That’s why leaders need to periodically revisit the firm’s unofficial rules. Write them out, so that you and your employees can compare notes about what’s expected of them. Consider whether unspoken rules reflect the kind of behavior you want to promote. And when norms change, overcommunicate so that everyone is on the same page.

Unwritten rules and ways of doing things — both good and bad — are ingrained in the corporate world. Often, these norms become so enmeshed in company culture that leaders don’t even think about them. But if a company’s norms aren’t regularly revisited to ensure they align with the organization’s goals, and if leaders aren’t careful about how their behavior contributes to them, they can morph from a positive force to a destructive one.

• KD Karen Niovitch Davis is a partner and the chief human resources officer of the strategic communications firm Prosek Partners.

Partner Center

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Why Submit?
• About International Studies Review
• About the International Studies Association
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

• < Previous

Custom, Reconsidered: Lessons on Unwritten Rules from Professional Sports

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Robert J Beck, Custom, Reconsidered: Lessons on Unwritten Rules from Professional Sports, International Studies Review , Volume 26, Issue 1, March 2024, viae010, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viae010

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Professional sports have unwritten, but nevertheless well-appreciated and behavior-guiding rules that have come to be viewed as obligatory and subject to enforcement. This essay uses such unwritten rules from professional sports as novel lenses through which to view afresh, and more richly to appreciate, customary international law (CIL) rules’ nature, origins, and evolution. Though much CIL scholarship has presumed that merely tradition and self-interest have empowered CIL’s legal force, unwritten rules from professional sports demonstrate that emergent and even unacknowledged norms can and do necessitate widely accepted actions and penalties. This essay begins with a discussion of CIL’s literature, distinct nature, and methodological challenges. It turns next to a review and analysis of four prominent, unwritten rules drawn from professional sports. Finally, based on that analysis, it identifies particular lessons of salience for students of CIL. This essay also specifies the broader implications for CIL of professional sports’ unwritten-but-obligatory rules.

El deporte profesional cuenta con reglas no escritas, pero que, sin embargo, son bien apreciadas y guían el comportamiento de tal forma que han llegado a ser vistas como obligatorias y sujetas a su cumplimiento. Este artículo utiliza estas reglas no escritas del deporte profesional como lentes novedosas a través de las cuales se puede ver de nuevo, y apreciar de una manera más rica, la naturaleza, los orígenes y la evolución de las normas del derecho internacional consuetudinario (CIL, por sus siglas en inglés). Aunque gran parte de los académicos en el ámbito del derecho internacional consuetudinario ha supuesto que tanto la mera tradición como el interés propio han dado poder a la fuerza jurídica del CIL, las reglas no escritas dentro del deporte profesional demuestran que las normas emergentes e, incluso las no reconocidas, pueden requerir y requieren acciones y sanciones ampliamente aceptadas. Este artículo comienza con una discusión acerca de la literatura del derecho internacional consuetudinario, así como de su naturaleza distintiva y de sus desafíos metodológicos. A continuación, realizamos una revisión y un análisis de cuatro prominentes reglas no escritas, extraídas del campo del deporte profesional. Finalmente, identificamos, a partir de ese análisis, lecciones particulares que resultarán de relevancia para los estudiantes de CIL. Este artículo también especifica las implicaciones más amplias que tienen para el derecho internacional consuetudinario aquellas reglas que no están escritas, pero que son de obligatorio cumplimiento en el deporte profesional.

Dans le sport professionnel, il existe certaines règles non écrites qui sont fort appréciées et qui orientent les comportements. Désormais considérées obligatoires, elles font l'objet de mesures d'application. Par le biais de ces règles, cet article adopte un nouvel angle pour appréhender et mieux apprécier la nature, les origines et l’évolution des règles du droit international coutumier (DIC). Bien que nombre de travaux de recherche en droit international coutumier aient postulé que seuls la tradition et les intérêts personnels ont donné une valeur légale au DIC, les règles non écrites du sport professionnel démontrent que les normes émergentes et même, non reconnues, peuvent nécessiter et nécessitent des mesures et des sanctions largement acceptées. Cet article traite d'abord de la littérature, de la nature distincte et des défis méthodologiques du droit international coutumier. Ensuite, il passe en revue et analyse quatre importantes règles non écrites tirées de sports professionnels. Enfin, en se fondant sur cette analyse, il tire certaines leçons d'importance pour les étudiants du DIC. Cet article précise aussi les implications plus larges pour le droit international coutumier relatif aux règles non écrites mais obligatoires du sport professionnel.

International Studies Association members

Personal account.

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Short-term Access

To purchase short-term access, please sign in to your personal account above.

Don't already have a personal account? Register

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1468-2486
• Print ISSN 1521-9488
• Copyright © 2024 International Studies Association
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Unwritten Constitutional Principles: The Challenge of Reconciling Political and Legal Constitutionalisms

* Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal. I wish to thank my friends and colleagues Noura Karazivan and Han-Ru Zhou for their invaluable comments on a preliminary version of this paper, and Bradley Wiseman for his elegant editorial work.

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Th[e] power [of the United States’ Supreme Court justices] is immense; but it is a power of opinion. They are omnipotent as long as the people consent to obey the law; they can do nothing once the people scorn the law. Now, the power of opinion is the most difficult one to exercise, because it is impossible to know its limits exactly. Often it is as dangerous to fall short, as to go beyond those limits.  [1]

On March 21 and 22, 2019, a symposium entitled “Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles: Contemporary Perspectives” was held at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa. This special issue comprises five of the papers that were then presented. The organizers of the symposium, Vanessa MacDonnell and Se-shauna Wheatle, graciously asked me to participate, initially as a commentator, and subsequently, as the author of the foreword to this special issue.

How one envisages the unwritten constitution in general and unwritten constitutional principles (UCPs) in particular is deeply rooted in one’s understanding of, and convictions about, both constitutionalism and democracy. Such understanding is also closely connected to what we as scholars believe to be the factors that trigger constitutional evolution—namely, speculative reason or political struggle, or both—and the role played by institutional actors in such evolution. And, most importantly, since a researcher’s conceptual theorization, however abstract it may be, is always—if only implicitly—based on a certain anthropological premise, our understanding of UCPs is linked to the kind of individual citizen we wish a particular constitutional regime to foster.

The papers featured here are all intellectually stimulating, not only because of the thought and meticulousness with which they were written, but also because they cover most of the central issues raised by the conceptual nebula the “unwritten constitutional principles” have become. As I have written many papers on this subject, in both French [2] and English, [3] some of my own work is analyzed and criticized in this special issue.

My position as author of this foreword is therefore somewhat uncomfortable. On the one hand, I cannot simply recount and summarize these papers, for although they are all excellent pieces of scholarship, I at times strongly disagree with what some authors assert, and with the manner in which my own work is sometimes depicted. On the other hand, it would be unjust to criticize colleagues deprived of the full opportunity to respond.

I have therefore chosen the following strategy, one that does not require direct references to specific papers. This foreword will take the shape of a short essay. [4] In Part I of this text, I will delineate what exactly is controversial about UCPs. In Part II, I shall inquire into the role of speculative reason and political struggle in constitutional evolution. I will discuss how our emphasis, as legal scholars, on one over the other testifies to our understanding of democracy and constitutionalism, and therefore impacts the degree of latitude we are willing to afford to judges in recognizing and enforcing UCPs. Throughout, I will argue for a just equilibrium to be struck between legal and political constitutionalisms, and more particularly, for the cultivation of a measure of skepticism toward a judge’s or a scholar’s capacity to find the “best answer” to a question of law. The five papers comprising this special issue showcase most of the major arguments commonly invoked in favour of or in opposition to UCPs, and they all, in one way or another, address the issues I intend to examine. Consequently, although I will purposely avoid any explicit mention of the papers, “authors” in this essay must be understood not as a general reference to scholars having written about UCPs, but rather as alluding to some or all of the five authors featured in this special issue.

To conclude on this point, I must emphasize that this is not a contest. Even if the authors with whom I disagree were identified, [5] no great harm would follow. It would in no way mean that my position is better in absolute terms than theirs. In his famous lecture “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber contends that a teacher cannot decide for the student, but can tell her, “if you want such and such an end, then you must take into the bargain the subsidiary consequences which according to all experience will occur. … Figuratively speaking, you serve this god and you offend the other god when you decide to adhere to this position.” [6] My aim is simply to seek to reveal which god we respectively serve when we subscribe to a particular understanding of UCPs.

I.  Distinguishing Between the Unwritten Constitution and Unwritten Constitutional Principles

UCPs have generated an extensive literature. I, along with others, have been identified as a staunch opponent of these principles. However, my objections have been largely exaggerated. I am partly at fault here. Chief Justice Lamer’s lamentable instrumentalization of British and Canadian constitutional histories in the Judicial Remuneration Reference [7] still stands, according to me, as one of the most intellectually dishonest rationales ever devised by a Supreme Court justice. [8] My irritation at this travesty of history certainly lent a patina of ferocity to some passages of my paper “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Principles” [9] and to the one I co-authored with Professor Yves-Marie Morissette (as he then was), “L’indépendance judiciaire et la Cour suprême : reconstruction historique douteuse et théorie constitutionnelle de complaisance.” [10] That said, rejecting the part is not equivalent to rejecting the whole. Those of us who found the Remuneration R eference unpalatable have never been wholly against UCPs; this would be a ludicrous stance to take for anyone even slightly knowledgeable in constitutional history.

To begin with, UCPs must not be confused with the unwritten constitution, and more precisely, the common law constitution. The latter is generally understood as comprising common law rules designed to control administrative action, or as encompassing such common law methodological techniques as “the principle of legality”—providing for a restrictive interpretation of legislation infringing upon common law rights (such as the control and enjoyment of one’s own property [11] or the need to establish the existence of mens rea in criminal matters [12] ). A more ambitious definition also encompasses constitutionally enshrined common law rules, such as those regulating parliamentary privileges. [13] Finally, the unwritten constitution is sometimes defined as equivalent to the material as opposed to the formal constitution [14] (i.e., the whole panoply of norms and practices regulating and limiting state power, such as constitutional conventions).

These understandings of the unwritten constitution are, for the most part, uncontroversial, since the unwritten rules to which they refer are either “democracy-promoting” [15] or “liberty-enhancing.” Democracy-promoting rules require politicians to bear the political responsibility for their actions (principle of legality and constitutional conventions) and provide them with unhindered freedom of speech and debate (parliamentary privileges). Liberty-enhancing rules ensure that citizens’ affairs will be dealt with according to law rather than whim (control of administrative action), that their property will not be arbitrarily encroached upon, and that only malevolent intent will lead to a deprivation of liberty. In addition, most of these rules do not stand in the way of the sovereignty of Parliament, as they impose only “manner and form” requirements.

In truth, the controversy centres on the “structural” UCPs as understood in the Remuneration and Secession references. [16] So-called because they are part and parcel of our constitution’s “internal architecture,” and because, without them, the “constitutional structure” of our polity would be inconceivable. [17] UCPs, as understood in both these cases, refer to abstract legal principles identified and interpreted by courts, from which judges can deduce the existence of more specific rules. The latter can be implemented by judges and can lead, in some instances, to the invalidation of legislation. Reflecting the broader debate over UCPs, some authors of this issue are quite comfortable with the courts’ exercise of such a power to create specific rules, whereas others—closer to my own opinion—are less so.

Notwithstanding the controversy, many features of these principles are uncontroversial. Importantly, no one doubts that, as underlined by the Supreme Court in Secession , they “emerge from an understanding of the constitutional text itself, the historical context, and previous judicial interpretations of constitutional meaning.” [18] Everyone also agrees that UCPs, as well as the legal obligations to which they give rise, may impose substantive limitations on government action:

Underlying constitutional principles may in certain circumstances give rise to substantive legal obligations (have “full legal force”, as we described it in the Patriation Reference  …), which constitute substantive limitations upon government action. These principles may give rise to very abstract and general obligations, or they may be more specific and precise in nature. The principles are not merely descriptive, but are also invested with a powerful normative force, and are binding upon both courts and governments. [19]

Some of the purposes to which they can be applied also raise no problem. For instance, as one author suggests, they can, and in fact do, operate as ground rules or codes of good governance for both the executive and the legislative powers. Finally, I do not believe anyone would quarrel with what I wrote nineteen years ago: “[T]he legitimacy of invoking unwritten principles will depend on the purpose they serve and on how the courts use them.” [20] However, this point gives rise to an area of wide disagreement, for the following questions arise: What are those purposes? In what manner should courts utilize UCPs? Are courts the best forum to instantiate them?

Proponents of a generous judicial recourse to UCPs invoke a series of arguments, the value of which skeptics such as I acknowledge. For instance, they insist on the limits of a purely textualist approach to the Constitution, on the ontological vagueness of constitutional texts and legal doctrines in general, on the undoubted existence of “gaps” in our written constitution, on the fact that resorting to unwritten sources of law is unavoidable, on the quasi-impossibility of amending our Constitution, and finally, on the inflated claims regarding the democratic underpinning of the written constitution. Nevertheless, from this, they conclude that it is legitimate for courts to resort to UCPs to “impose” legal duties that can be judicially enforced. The vocabulary employed is quite eloquent: UCPs “entail,” “demand,” or “impose” affirmative constitutional obligations or the adoption of specific rules, they “require” the executive to create and maintain particular institutions or processes, and they give rise to “concrete legal obligations.” These authors are not indifferent to the legitimacy issues raised by their proposals. They take great care to state that their suggestions minimally impair parliamentary sovereignty. The specific rules they advocate are confined, so they argue, to administrative processes or procedural schemes comprising certain minimal but well-defined requirements. Legislatures remain free to act, but within the bounds delineated and imposed by courts.

It remains that, in encouraging courts to create judicially enforceable binding rules based on UCPs, these authors give pride of place to judges in the identification and implementation of the rules that could be deduced from these very abstract principles (democracy, federalism, rule of law and constitutionalism, and respect for minorities). However, as illustrated by the Secession R eference , one should not forget that UCPs remain “binding upon both courts and governments,” [21] even though their implementation can only be accomplished by domestic or foreign political actors. In other words, as was clearly demonstrated in that case, a judge can at once create a legal framework (“duty to negotiate”) under the aegis of a number of UCPs, and delegate its enforcement to non-judicial bodies.

Allow me to clarify. The rules, processes, and institutions endorsed by some authors, and that should, according to them, be recognized and eventually implemented by courts, could indeed strengthen the democratic fibre of our polity. I myself have not hesitated to make what might seem to some as very idealistic proposals. [22] However, when I did so, I remained convinced that they could not be translated into specific binding rules sanctioned by judges, the latter lacking, in my opinion, the legitimacy to do so. [23]

I wish to highlight two contentious issues that are specific to unwritten constitutional principles and that, with respect, are insufficiently addressed in some of the papers.

First, the level of abstraction of UCPs is such that there is a theological dimension to them. They operate as articles of faith that are impossible to object to—who would quarrel with the sublime?—and, more importantly, they are, in themselves, devoid of any precise meaning. That is why the Supreme Court stressed, in Secession , that Canada’s specific history constituted the horizon, the background of intelligibility, that had to be resorted to as a basis for interpreting the unwritten constitutional principle of federalism. [24] Indeed, if all references to the horizon of significance that is history were to be eliminated, then all choices would be equally valid and equally important. [25] Any desirable idea gleaned in other constitutions could then certainly be marshalled by courts, as advocated by one author, to fill gaps in our Constitution. By the same token, as others argue, the importance of the constitutional text could be downgraded on the pretense that the guidance it provides is no less vague than that yielded by UCPs, though this would beg the question of why the abstract federal principle should not lead the supreme courts of the United States, Australia, and Switzerland to eventually propose carbon-copy solutions.

In fact, history and text, however unclear the paths they provide, do operate as essential boundaries to the interpretation of UCPs. Claiming that they are no more imprecise than the text of the Constitution has its limits. None of the authors of this special issue would assert that there is no fundamental difference between the Pacific Ocean and the Loch Ness, the one just being bigger and saltier than the other. All would agree that one’s chances of getting lost on the former are much greater than on the latter. The same is true of UCPs and constitutional texts. [26]

As there are many UCPs, another problem that needs to be addressed is the “weight and priority” they must respectively be given. [27] This is what I have dubbed the conundrum of their “interrelatedness.” [28] Contrary to what some claim, I did not say—although I could have—that such interrelatedness may lead to conceptual incoherence because of the inherently abstract nature of each principle and the unclear boundary lines between them. Rather, I praised the Supreme Court for having insisted on the interrelatedness of UCPs, for “if given their full extension,” not only could these principles be irreconcilable with one another, but more importantly, they could be brandished as absolutes. [29] Absolutization of a single principle by a court is one of the greatest dangers raised by UCPs. Whereas the majority’s reasoning in Remuneration was unconvincing on account of its total indifference to countervailing UCPs, [30] the Supreme Court’s careful and prudential appraisal of the UCPs’ interrelatedness in the Secession R eference gave that decision the stamp not only of great scholarship, but also of great statecraft. The Court at once wisely insisted on the need to avoid absolutist interpretations of UCPs [31] and monistic descriptions of our country’s political communities. [32]

As mentioned earlier, in spite of the difficulties associated with the UCPs themselves, the main controversy centres on the extent to which they allow judges to create, based on a highly abstract matrix, more specific rules that they can then implement themselves. Behind this rather technical issue are fundamental questions relating to the role of speculative reason and political struggle in constitutional evolution. Emphasizing one over the other tellingly reveals how we conceive of democracy and constitutionalism. And this perception impacts the degree of latitude we are willing to afford to judges over UCPs.

II. Speculative Reason and Political Struggle as Impulses of Constitutional Evolution

The extent to which scholars differ in the discretion they would impart to judges over the determination and implementation of specific rules under UCPs reflects the well-known tension between legal constitutionalism and political constitutionalism. [33] In a nutshell, the first attributes a greater role to courts than the second for holding those in power to account. [34]

A fundamental characteristic of the legal constitutionalists’ epistemological perspective is their greater faith—even if only implicitly—in the power of speculative reason. Defined as an ideal type, speculative reason points to a contemplative and detached process of reasoning that privileges logical inferences drawn from basic principles over analyses of the specifics of a particular situation. Speculative reason is most preoccupied with seeking the “Good” in the abstract, and is therefore less concerned with the realm of experience.

For instance, although section 11(d) of the Charter had always been interpreted as only allowing the level of judicial independence necessary to guarantee a fair trial to the accused, [35] the abstractness of the unwritten principle of judicial independence was interpreted as logically entailing a requirement to depoliticize the relationship between courts and governments. [36] Thus, whether an accused was involved or not in litigation , section 11(d) [37] was held to give rise to a constitutional obligation on the part of the provinces who intended to reduce the salaries of judges to submit any proposed changes to an independent, objective, and effective body that would depoliticize the process. Curiously, a unanimous court had previously determined that such commissions were unnecessary under section 11(d). [38]

Similarly, although they cannot point to an actual crisis concerning the issue they are studying, some authors of this special issue argue that judges should recognize and “impose” specific rules or institutions. They find their inspiration in other countries’ constitutions or in what their own research (or that of other knowledgeable scholars) has led them to consider appropriate. The whole purpose of their defence of UCPs is precisely aimed at providing judges with the power to implement what speculative reason dictates is necessary to address societal threats. For these authors, live threats are no longer necessary as justification for such a position; potential threats that could logically come to mind suffice. I share these scholars’ frustrations over the slow pace of reforms. I also admit that prescribing potential amendments is part of the legal scholar’s and normativist’s genome. All the same, because speculative reason knows no bounds, such a perspective serves to enhance the role of judges as exponents of specific normative and institutional reforms, and therefore prioritizes legal constitutionalism over political constitutionalism.

At its extreme, the espousal of UCPs leads some to claim that the public institutions comprising Canada’s constitutional architecture are simply manifestations of these principles. This is equivalent to standing Canadian constitutional history on its head. To take but one example, our federal institutions were not primarily the product of an abstract unwritten principle of federalism. Rather, they were the result of compromises made by highly pragmatic politicians faced with the instabilities generated by the regime of the 1840 Union Act , and who knew or cared very little for political theory. [39] Once established, however, our federal regime triggered a variety of normative discourses on federalism that eventually influenced the manner in which our Constitution was to be interpreted.

The English Parliament provides another good example of how constitutional evolution proceeds. It was not created in celebration of the principle of democracy or equality, but out of an act of royal will. [40] Parliament was created because it served the King’s interests. In the sixteenth century, the English Parliament did not suffer the fate of its continental counterparts because it assisted rather than opposed Henry VIII in his quest to undo the medieval privileges constraining the exercise of his royal authority. [41] Parliament also proved essential in the financing of the ever more expensive wars in which the King was embroiled. Kings realized that allowing a measure of political representation in Parliament to those who produced wealth was an astute political investment, much more efficient than predation. By protecting the interests of the wealth-producers and letting them have a say in the political arena, kings were able, in exchange, to obtain the producers’ consent to the taxation that generated the revenue stream they needed to consolidate their power. [42] This is not to say, however, that this political struggle did not generate reason-based , normative discourses that eventually played a significant role in constitutional evolution. Indeed, more and more non-elite groups adopted the normative vocabulary of democracy, equality, and liberty to claim their share in the exercise of political power. This was not the result of a well thought out rational plan or a mystically propelled evolution, but rather the result of what I described as a “diffuse constitutionalism,” [43] where constitutionalism results from the unintended consequences of willful or spontaneous human actions—for instance, the King’s creation of Parliament—that are not necessarily designed to do good.

In other words, the political constitution nourishes a normative discourse that eventually finds its way into political theories and the legal constitution, and, in turn, fuels further political movements. Thus, viewed from a historical perspective, legal and political constitutionalisms are complementary, although they are sometimes in tension with one another. [44]

The role we are willing to ascribe to judges in constitutional developments is indicative of our understanding of democracy and constitutionalism.

No doubt, it is possible to recognize a democratic quality to judicial review, and therefore to the legal constitution. Democracy is not simply majority rule. It is simultaneously a mechanism of authorization and decision-making (elections and majority rule), as well as a mechanism for the justification of decisions (based on openness and rational deliberation). [45] If this assumption regarding the dual nature of democracy is maintained, then adjudication is not devoid of a democratic foundation.

As Lon L. Fuller has posited, adjudication is expected to allow the expression of reasoned arguments by all parties involved and the serene consideration of those arguments by the judge or arbiter, contrary to decisions resulting from an election. [46] Furthermore, in the absence of reasoned argument, meaningful participation in the process of adjudication would be impossible. The simple affirmation of something does not qualify as reasoned argument. The latter can only be so if some principle or principles are asserted upon which its soundness and relevancy rest. [47] That is why, in the words of Fuller, “[t]he proper province of adjudication is to make an authoritative determination of questions raised by claims of right and accusations of guilt.” [48] It is in this sense that courts can claim, as Pierre Rosanvallon puts it, to possess a “reflexive legitimacy.” [49]

What are the limits then to the “province of adjudication”? As Fuller has stated, courts are not well equipped to address “polycentric” [50] issues, meaning issues involving many affected parties, not all of whom are represented before the court—issues whose complex ramifications render it difficult to measure the consequence that a particular solution may have on the entire political dynamic more generally. [51] Interventions that take place outside the scope of a court’s “province of adjudication” could compromise the legitimacy of its decision. The outcome of a decision may be considered desirable or morally justifiable according to some external moral conception, but from a Fullerian perspective, the moral legitimacy of the decision itself will be compromised if the process leading to it does not respect the mode of participation that is inherent to it. [52]

In my view, most of the rules or processes advocated for by some of the authors, whether or not they be defined as a “thin” rather than a “thick” version of a given UCP, deal with polycentric issues. They mostly seek to rebalance the equilibrium of power between the people and the state, or between the different institutions of the state. That they could be suggested by judges is one thing; that judges could impose them is another.

Besides, there is a significant difference between a rule aimed at establishing a general legal framework within which the political forces could negotiate the very fate of our country, as was the case in Secession (“the duty to negotiate”), and one that unilaterally imposes a duty allowing for the quashing of democratically enacted legislation, as in Remuneration (“the establishment of independent, objective and effective judicial remuneration bodies”).

After all, if constitutionalism is defined as a dynamic and interactional process aimed at limiting the abuse of state power, then the judiciary’s own power must also be scrutinized and delimited. By encouraging judges to impose solutions on the basis of UCPs, we scholars may end up, if we are not careful, indirectly fostering a “democracy without a people,” [53] a polity where democratic principles are honoured by courts, but where the soul of democracy—public participation—withers away. [54]

Acknowledging that some issues are better left to be decided under the political constitution is also much more in tune with our parliamentary democracy. I admit that we are increasingly witnessing a “presidentialization” of power that further marginalizes the role played by the people’s representatives. [55] Just the same, turning to courts is no answer to that problem, and it carries serious consequences. In stating clearly, as it did in Secession , that it “ha[d] no supervisory role over the political aspects of constitutional negotiations,” [56] the Supreme Court embraced a divided understanding of interpretive responsibility anchored in its preoccupation with legitimacy. If, on such a fundamental issue as the ability of a province to secede, political actors had been left with no responsibility to exercise constitutional duties in the hustle and bustle of democratic institutions, how then would it have been possible to infuse political and civic life with a true constitutional and democratic ethos? [57] Would this not have encouraged political actors to completely eschew their duty to comply with the Constitution?

If democracy is to mean anything, then courts must design solutions undergirded by an “active” rather than a “passive” understanding of citizenship. [58] This is so with common law constitutionalism. The principle of legality, requiring express statutory derogations to common law rights, operates as an alarm bell by alerting the opposition and the citizenry that potential abuse is on the horizon. However, embracing the tragic nature of democracy, the principle of legality implicitly accepts that the citizens’ indifference to their own fate might lead them to ignore the forewarning chimes. Where there is inertia, nothing will prevent the abuse from taking place. Be that as it may, the best way to discredit the judiciary is for courts to try to substitute their will for that of the majority on the basis of vague UCPs. Courts must constantly reiterate that the fate of liberal democracy is the responsibility of citizens and their representatives. Where UCPs are concerned, the question should be: How are the principles to be mobilized, if they are thought to be aimed at furthering the collective interests of a responsible citizenry composed not of passive individuals, but of active ones? Hence, the question is not what is structurally and rationally desirable at an abstract level, but what is appropriate for the lived experiences of individuals involved in the imperfect and messy world of representative democracy. [59]

As I and others have advocated, “judicial interpretive activity [should be] aimed at reinforcing rather than enfeebling the democratic fibre of the Canadian constitutional order.” [60] American legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein has argued that “decisional minimalism,”—that is, when judges “sa[y] no more than necessary to justify an outcome, and leav[e] as much as possible undecided,” [61] —can actually enhance democratic deliberations. It succeeds in doing so by “promot[ing] reason-giving and ensur[ing] that certain important decisions are made by democratically accountable actors.” [62] In my article “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Constitutional Principles,” I tried to demonstrate that all of the Supreme Court’s decisions based on UCPs met that test, with the exception of one, namely the Remuneration R eference (and its large progeny). Nineteen years later, this still holds true. [63]

Interestingly, in that case, the majority, without giving any explanation, did not resort, as it traditionally had before, to a judicial (and judicious) test that, however symbolically, gives pride of place to the perception of the “reasonable and informed person” in the adjudication of judicial independence issues—a test that is citizen-centric rather than state-centric. Chief Justice Lamer did refer to this criterion, but added an objective dimension to it that radically modified its nature:

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that Le Dain J. [in Valente ] intended the objective guarantees and the reasonable perception of independence to be two distinct concepts. Rather, the objective guarantees must be viewed as those guarantees that are necessary to ensure a reasonable perception of independence. As Le Dain J. said himself, for a court or tribunal to be perceived as independent, that “perception must … be a perception of whether the tribunal enjoys the essential objective conditions or guarantees of judicial independence”. [64]

In other words, it is not so much the reasonable and informed citizen’s perception that matters, but that of the reasonable and informed citizen who is aware that independent commissions are an objective necessity. In other words, the test could be rechristened the “reasonable and informed judge-in-disguise” criterion. [65] I still remain firmly convinced that Justice La Forest was absolutely right when he concluded:

In my view, it is abundantly clear that a reasonable, informed person would not perceive that, in the absence of a commission process, all changes to the remuneration of provincial court judges threaten their independence. I reach this conclusion by considering the type of change to judicial salaries that is at issue in the present appeals. It is simply not reasonable to think that a decrease to judicial salaries that is part of an overall economic measure which affects the salaries of substantially all persons paid from public funds imperils the independence of the judiciary. To hold otherwise is to assume that judges could be influenced or manipulated by such a reduction. A reasonable person, I submit, would believe judges are made of sturdier stuff than this. [66]

In situations where an informed citizen would perceive a reasonable danger of political manipulation, the need for institutional reform might arise, but the responsibility of devising the appropriate institutional design would be incumbent upon the legislature. [67] In the absence of any real threat, dogmatic ratiocinations were held to require the solution favoured by the Court. Some will say that “output legitimacy” (reinforcing judicial independence) should trump “input legitimacy” (the quality of the democratic process leading to a decision). I personally do not agree.

When all is said and done, one’s preference for legal constitutionalism over political constitutionalism, for courts over politicians, for speculative reason over what Michael Oakeshott referred to as political “traditions of behaviour,” [68] comes down to how one conceives of truth. The greater one’s belief in a form of universal truth attainable by way of reasoning upon principles, the greater one’s faith in judges will be. [69] If, on the contrary, one tends to be more skeptical, and thus more relativist, one will tend to recognize a greater role for political debate and political struggle, however imperfect the solutions they lead to may be. According to the latter view, democratic truths are closer in nature to rational compromises than to rational perfections. [70] We all stand somewhere along this spectrum. Although a staunch rationalist, I see Truth as a moving target, a horizon always receding. As a jurist, I witness daily the very fragile nature of the legal truths to which adjudication may lead. And as a legal historian, I cannot but recognize the inescapability of the law of unintended consequences. For those reasons, I recoil at attempts to cast judges as primary oracles of the law and foreseers of the Good. [71] Then again, I might just be deficient in confidence and audacity.

“Nothing to excess,” the celebrated inscription in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, encapsulates the prudential approach we should adopt in determining who, between the judge and the politician, should be invested with the responsibility of defining and implementing the rules distilled from UCPs.

As I said in the introduction, our understanding of UCPs is closely associated with our innermost beliefs as to what constitutes a liberal democratic regime. Whatever our differences might be, the authors of this special issue would all agree—and some, in fact, explicitly do—that, if such a regime is to survive, it calls for what Hoi Kong and the late Roderick A. Macdonald termed as “virtuous judges.” [72] Institutional and cultural conditions must exist that will “both facilitate the exercise of judicial virtues including temperance, courage, intelligence, and wisdom, and discourage judges from falling prey to judicial vices such as corruption, cowardice, incompetence, and foolishness.” [73] It would appear that informal political and judicial culture plays an essential part in the fostering of these judicial virtues. Judges must tread a path of legitimacy that is sometimes very narrow and calls for the exercise of phronesis , or practical wisdom. [74] The stakes are high. In the sentence following the passage quoted in the epigraph to this foreword, Alexis de Tocqueville summarizes the challenge beautifully:

[F]ederal judges must be not only good citizens, learned and upright men, qualities necessary for all magistrates, but they must also be statesmen; they must know how to discern the spirit of the times, to brave the obstacles that can be overcome, and to change direction when the current threatens to carry away, with them, the sovereignty of the Union and the obedience due to its laws. [75]

In all honesty, if the majority in Remuneration had demonstrated as much statecraft as some of the same judges showed in Secession , and had it refrained from quashing legislation on the basis of a reasoning evidencing judicial self-interest, I do not believe that UCPs would have generated such controversy.

Finally, there is an undeniable Dworkinian flavour to the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Remuneration and Secession , as well as that of many scholars. A word of warning to us all: Dworkin lived and thought in a time of liberal-minded judges. Looking at what is now happening in the United States, let us not forget that his Hercules might become someone else’s Hades. Would UCPs appear as exciting then?

[1]     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, ed by Eduardo Nolla, translated by James T Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010) vol 1 at 246.

[2]     See e.g. Jean Leclair, “Les silences de Polybe et le Renvoi sur la sécession du Québec” in Jacques Bouineau, ed, Personne et Res Publica , vol 2 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008) 135; Jean Leclair & Yves-Marie Morissette, “L’indépendance judiciaire et la Cour suprême : reconstruction historique douteuse et théorie constitutionnelle de complaisance” (1998) 36:3 Osgoode Hall LJ 485.

[3]     See e.g. Jean Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism: An Analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Reasoning in Reference re Secession of Quebec, 1998 ” in Alberto López-Basaguren & Leire Escajedo San-Epifanio, eds, Claims for Secession and Federalism: A Comparative Study with a Special Focus on Spain (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019) 63 [Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism”]; Jean Leclair, “Constitutional Principles in the Secession Reference ” in Peter Oliver, Patrick Macklem & Nathalie Des Rosiers, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) 1009; Jean Leclair, “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Constitutional Principles” (2002) 27:2 Queen’s LJ 389 [Leclair, “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Constitutional Principles”]; Jean Leclair, “The Secession Reference: A Ruling in Search of a Nation” (2000) 34:3 RJT 885; Jean Leclair, “Impoverishment of the Law by the Law: A Critique of the Attorney General’s Vision of the Rule of Law and the Federal Principle” (1998) 10:1 Const Forum Const 1 ; Jean Leclair, “The Attorney General’s Vision”, translated by IM Milne, in David Schneiderman, ed, The Quebec Decision: Perspectives on the Supreme Court Ruling on Secession (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1999) 72.

[4]     My intent is not to examine the extensive literature dealing with UCPs in detail, but rather to bring to light some of the most challenging issues they raise, as they are revealed by the five papers making up this special issue.

[5]     It goes without saying that if someone reads the whole special issue, she will identify the authors with whom I agree or disagree.

[6]     Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation” in HH Gerth & C Wright Mills, eds, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology , translated by the editors (New York: Routledge, 2009) 129 at 151.

[7]     Reference re Remuneration of Judges of the Provincial Court of Prince Edward Island , [1997] 3 SCR 3, 150 DLR (4th) 577 [ Remuneration ].

[8]     Described by dissenting Justice La Forest as a “historical fallacy,” strong words indeed coming from a colleague ( ibid at para 311).

[9]     Supra note 3.

[10]    Supra note 2.

[11]    See Colet v R , [1981] 1 SCR 2, 119 DLR (3d) 521.

[12]    See Beaver v R , [1957] SCR 531, 118 CCC 129.

[13]    See New Brunswick Broadcasting Co v Nova Scotia (Speaker of the House of Assembly) , [1993] 1 SCR 319, 100 DLR (4th) 212.

[14]    For a recent and interesting overview of the distinction, see Julian Arato, “Constitutionality and Constitutionalism Beyond the State: Two Perspectives on the Material Constitution of the United Nations” (2012) 10:3 NYU Intl J Cont L 627.

[15]    I borrow this expression from Sujit Choudhry & Robert Howse, “Constitutional Theory and the Quebec Secession Reference ” (2000) 13:2 Can JL & Jur 143 at 162–63.

[16]    See Remuneration , supra note 7; Reference re Secession of Quebec , [1998] 2 SCR 217, 161 DLR (4th) 385 [ Secession ].

[17]    See Secessio n , supra note 16 at paras 50–51.

[18]    Ibid at para 32.

[19]    Ibid at para 54 [references omitted].

[20]    Leclair, “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Constitutional Principles”, supra note 3 at 431.

[21]    Secession , supra note 16 at para 54.

[22]    See Jean Leclair, “Invisibility, Wilful Blindness, and Impending Doom: The Future (If Any) of Canadian Federalism” in Carolyn Hughes Tuohy et al, eds, Policy Transformation in Canada: Is the Past Prologue? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019) 106.

[23]    See ibid at 110; Jean Leclair, “Nanabush, Lon Fuller and Historical Treaties: The Potentialities and Limits of Adjudication” in John Borrows & Michael Coyle, eds, The Right Relationship: Reimagining the Implementation of Historical Treaties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017) 325 [Leclair, “Potentialities and Limits of Adjudication”].

[24]    See Secession , supra note 16 at para 32.

[25]    See Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism”, supra note 3 at 71.

[26]    Would the Court have made as much mileage on the unwritten constitutional principle of the “honour of the Crown” ( Beckman v Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation , 2010 SCC 53 at para 42) had it not been for the presence of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 ?

[27]    See Leclair, “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Constitutional Principles”, supra note 3 at 417ff.

[28]    See ibid at 392, 400.

[29]    See ibid at 417–18: “Some of these principles, if given their full extension, may be irreconcilable; for example, democracy and the rule of law. In Secession , the Court was well aware of the problem. This is why it emphasized that these principles do not exist in the abstract, but must be put into historical context. The Court also insisted that there is no hierarchy among them.” And at 430–31: “[U]nlike written constitutional provisions, unwritten constitutional principles are liable to operate in an absolute fashion, unless judges decide to invoke a counteracting principle. Ignoring counteracting rules is hardly possible when explicit provisions are concerned. Section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867 could not be invoked without any mention being made of section 92.”

[30]    See ibid at 420, 423, 433.

[31]    See Secession , supra note 16 at para 49: “These defining principles function in symbiosis. No single principle can be defined in isolation from the others, nor does any one principle trump or exclude the operation of any other.”

[32]    See Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism”, supra note 3.

[33]    There is a vast literature on this multifaceted subject. For a recent examination of this tension by a leading constitutionalist, see Martin Loughlin, “The Political Constitution Revisited” (2019) 30:1 King’s LJ 5. For my own take, see Jean Leclair, “Michael Oakeshott ou la recherche d’une politique dépourvue d’abstractions” (2014) 12 Jus Politicum 1.

[34]    See Graham Gee & Grégoire CN Webber, “What is a Political Constitution?” (2010) 30:2 Oxford J Leg Stud 273 at 273: “[T]he idea of a political constitution … is associated with holding those who exercise political power to account, for the most part, through political processes and in political institutions … [whereas] a legal constitution … [is] associated with holding those exercising political power to account, to a substantial and increasing extent, through judicial review.”

[35]    As underlined by dissenting Justice La Forest in Remuneration , “it is important to remember that judicial independence is not an end in itself. Independence is required only insofar as it serves to ensure that cases are decided in an impartial manner” ( supra note 7 at para 332). He then quotes, of all people (!), Chief Justice Lamer in R v Lippé , [1991] 2 SCR 114, 1990 CanLII 18 as authority.

[36]    See Remuneration , supra note 7 at para 95: “[T]he preamble is not only a key to construing the express provisions of the  Constitution Act, 1867 , but also invites the use of those organizing principles to fill out gaps in the express terms of the constitutional scheme. It is the means by which the underlying logic of the Act can be given the force of law” [emphasis added].

[37]    The Chief Justice had stated that the “substantive provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867  … [including section 11(d)] merely elaborate those organizing principles in the institutional apparatus they create or contemplate” ( ibid at para 95).

[38]    See Valente v R , [1985] 2 SCR 673 at 706, 24 DLR (4th) 161 [ Valente ].

[39]    Jean-Charles Bonenfant has documented the lack of interest manifested by the Fathers of Confederation toward political theory: see Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “L’esprit de 1867” (1963) 17 :1 R histoire Amérique française 19 at 20–21, 25–27; Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “La genèse de la Loi de 1867 concernant l’Amérique du Nord britannique” (1948) 9:1 Culture 3 at 17; Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “Le Canada et les hommes politiques de 1867” (1967) 21:3a R histoire Amérique française 571 at 587; Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “Les projets théoriques du fédéralisme canadien” (1964) 29 Cahiers dix 71 at 81–82; Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “L’idée que les Canadiens français de 1864 pouvaient avoir du fédéralisme” (1964) 25:4 Culture   307 at 310.

[40]    See Martin Loughlin, The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) at 46.

[41]    See ibid at 47–48.

[42]    See Douglass C North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: WW Norton, 1981) at 140–41; Hendrik Spruyt, “War, Trade, and State Formation” in Robert E Goodin, ed, The Oxford Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 567 at 573; Robert H Bates, Prosperity & Violence: The Political Economy of Development , 2nd ed (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2010) at 40–56.

[43]    See Jean Leclair, “The Story of Constitutions, Constitutionalism and Reconciliation: A Work of Prose? Poetry? Or Both?” (2017) 22:3 Rev Const Stud 329 at 341 [Leclair, “The Story of Constitutions, Constitutionalism and Reconciliation”].

[44]    I explore this idea in more detail in “The Story of Constitutions, Constitutionalism and Reconciliation”, ibid .

[45]    See Marcel Gauchet, La démocratie : d’une crise à l’autre (Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 2007).

[46]    See “The Forms and Limits of Adjudication” in Kenneth I Winston, ed, The Principles of Social Order: Selected Essays of Lon L Fuller (Durham: Duke University Press, 1981) 86.

[47]    See ibid at 96: “The litigant must therefore, if his participation is to be meaningful, assert some principle or principles by which his arguments are sound and his proofs relevant.”

[48]    Ibid .

[49]    Pierre Rosanvallon, La légitimité démocratique : impartialité, réflexivité, proximité (Paris: Seuil, 2008).

[50]    Fuller, supra note 46 at 111–21.

[51]    Fuller stresses that the majority principle is not appropriate either for solving polycentric problems—as would be the case if direct democracy were resorted to (see ibid at 117).

[52]    See Leclair, “Potentialities and Limits of Adjudication”, supra note 23 at 330–31.

[53]    I borrow this expression from Pierre Manent, La raison des nations : réflexions sur la démocratie en Europe (Paris: Gallimard, 2006) at 16. See also Jean Leclair, “Le discours des droits : un frein à la défense des droits des minorités?” in Frédéric Bédard, Jean Leclair & Michel Morin, eds, La diversité culturelle et linguistique au Canada et au Maroc en droit interne et en droit international (Montreal: Thémis, 2018) 73 [Leclair, “Le discours des droits”].

[54]    I think that even the imposition by judges of specific rules designed to enhance democratic representation would go too far. How and by what means such representation might be strengthened certainly qualifies as a polycentric issue.

[55]    See Pierre Rosanvallon, Le bon gouvernement (Paris: Seuil, 2015).

[56]    Secession , supra note 16 at para 100.

[57]    See Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism”, supra note 3.

[58]    See Jean Leclair, “Réflexions critiques au sujet de la métaphore du dialogue en droit constitutionnel canadien” (2003) R du B   377. In that paper, I criticized “reading-in” as a technique that encourages citizen apathy. At 397–98, I wrote: “Dans une perspective démocratique, le titulaire du pouvoir ne peut être une autorité autocratique, aussi bienveillante soit-elle. Le principe démocratique suppose la participation des citoyens et non leur obéissance passive.”

[59]    Interestingly, some of the suggestions made by authors on the basis of UCPs have been adopted by a number of legislatures, which goes to show that there is no need to make use of the legal constitution when the political one is working.

[60]    Leclair, “Canada’s Unfathomable Unwritten Constitutional Principles”, supra note 3 at 428, 431–32.

[61]    One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999) at 3.

[62]    Ibid at 5. See also Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism”, supra note 3 at 82–83.

[63]    In Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia v British Columbia (AG) , 2014 SCC 59, the majority decision reinforced its interpretation of section 96 of the Constitution Act, 1867 by harnessing it to the unwritten constitutional principle of the rule of law. Having done so, it concluded that the hearing fee scheme established under British Columbia’s Supreme Court Civil Rules was unconstitutional, as it “den[ied] people access to the courts” and so “infringe[d] the core jurisdiction of the superior courts” (at para 32). As did Justice Cromwell in his concurring opinion, I believe this recourse to UCPs was unnecessary, since the same result could heve been reached on traditional administrative law grounds. That said, at the very least, the use of the rule of law UPC was designed to provide citizens with a means to make their voices heard. Furthermore, the Court’s recourse to this principle was limited to the striking down of the litigious regulatory scheme. The Court did not use it as a stepping stone for prescribing what should replace it.

[64]    Remuneration , supra note 7 at para 112 [references omitted]. Ironically, in Valente , the very same Justice Le Dain concluded that what was theoretically appropriate—including a commission process—was not necessarily mandated constitutionally:

Although it may be theoretically preferable that judicial salaries should be fixed by the legislature rather than the executive government and should be made a charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund rather than requiring annual appropriation, I do not think that either of these features should be regarded as essential to the financial security that may be reasonably perceived as sufficient for independence under s. 11(d) of the Charter . At the present time in Canada the amount of judges’ salaries is a matter for the initiative of the Executive, whether they are fixed by act of the legislature or by regulation. Moreover, it is far from clear that having to bring proposed increases to judges’ salaries before the legislature is more desirable from the point of view of judicial independence, and indeed adequate salaries, than having the question determined by the Executive alone, pursuant to a general legislative authority . In the case of the salaries of provincial court judges in Ontario, assurance that proper consideration will be given to the adequacy of judicial salaries is provided by the role assigned to the Ontario Provincial Courts Committee, although I do not consider the existence of such a committee to be essential to security of salary for purposes of  s. 11 (d) . The essential point, in my opinion, is that the right to salary of a provincial court judge is established by law, and there is no way in which the Executive could interfere with that right in a manner to affect the independence of the individual judge. Making judicial salaries a charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund instead of having to include them in annual appropriations is, I suppose, theoretically a measure of greater security, but practically it is impossible that the legislature would refuse to vote the annual appropriation in order to attempt to exercise some control or influence over a class of judges as a whole ( Valente , supra note 38 at 706 [emphasis added].

[65]    I acknowledge that the “reasonable person” is always a judge in disguise. However, to assume that this reasonable person would be aware of the existence of the “objective conditions of judicial independence” is pushing the envelope a little too far.

[66]    Remuneration , supra note 7 at para 337.

[67]    Justice La Forest did conclude, for instance, that some of the actions taken by the Manitoba government might have led a reasonable person to conclude that the government intended to financially penalize judges if they attempted to challenge the legislation reducing the salary of Provincial Court judges and public sector employees (see ibid at paras 364–65). This meant that the Government of Manitoba would have to intervene to remedy the problem.

[68]    “Political Education” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991) 43 at 56: “Politics is the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a collection of people who, in respect of their common recognition of a manner of attending to its arrangements, compose a single community. To suppose a collection of people without recognized traditions of behaviour, or one which enjoyed arrangements which intimated no direction for change and needed no attention, is to suppose a people incapable of politics. This activity, then, springs neither from instant desires, nor from general principles, but from the existing traditions of behaviour themselves. And the form it takes, because it can take no other, is the amendment of existing arrangements by exploring and pursuing what is intimated in them.”

[69]    In a brilliant article, Yves-Marie Morissette (now Justice Morissette QCA) dissects with the utmost clarity what kind of “truths” the irreducible indeterminacy of law allows jurists and judges to attain: see Yves-Marie Morissette, “Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (la rationalité juridique)” (2000) 45:3 McGill LJ 591. He demonstrates, very convincingly in my opinion, how H.L.A. Hart’s positivism better reflects the reality of what judges actually do when they create or interpret law (especially constitutional law), as compared to Ronald Dworkin’s Hercules thesis of “better fit” which, in truth, defies empirical verification. How could one empirically demonstrate, for instance, that the aboriginal law doctrine developed by the Supreme Court since the mid-1990s fits (or does not fit) the legal practice better, and puts (or does not put) it in a better light?

[70]    These last two sentences are inspired by Hans Kelsen’s analysis of democracy in his essay The Essence and Value of Democracy , ed by Nadia Urbinati & Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, translated by Brain Graf (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) 101 at 103:

The metaphysical-absolutistic worldview is linked to an autocratic, and the critical-relativistic to a democratic disposition. [A person] who views absolute truth and absolute values as inaccessible to the human understanding cognition must deem not only his own, but also the opinion of others at least as feasible. The idea of democracy thus presupposes relativism as its worldview. … The rule of the majority, which is so characteristic of democracy, distinguishes itself from all other forms of rule in that it not only by its very nature presupposes, but actually recognizes and protects—by way of basic rights and freedoms and the principle of proportionality—an opposition, i.e., the minority. The stronger the minority, however, the more the politics in a democracy become politics of compromise. Similarly, there is nothing more characteristic of the relativistic worldview than the tendency to seek a balance between two opposing standpoints, neither of which can by itself be adopted fully, without reservation, and in complete negation of the other.

[71]    See Leclair, “Le discours des droits”, supra note 53; Leclair, “Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism”, supra note 3.

[72]    See Roderick A Macdonald & Hoi Kong, “Judicial Independence as a Constitutional Virtue” in Michel Rosenfeld & András Sajó, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 831.

[73]    Ibid at 841.

[74]    See ibid at 852.

[75]    S upra note 1 at 246.

Thank you to our sponsors

• < Previous

Home > Faculty Works > FACULTY_SCHOLARSHIP > 2183

All Faculty Scholarship

Unwritten rules and the new contract paradigm.

David A. Skeel Jr. , University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Follow

Document Type

Publication date.

In a recent essay—part of a larger book project-- Douglas Baird contends that the standard accounts of the history of corporate reorganization miss an essential feature: the extent to which both current and prior practice have been governed by unwritten rules (such as full disclosure and the opportunity for each party to participate in the negotiations) that “are well-known to insiders, but largely invisible to those on the outside.” According to Professor Baird, the unwritten rules, not bankruptcy’s distribution provisions or other features of the Bankruptcy Code, are the essence of corporate reorganization.

This essay is a short response to Professor Baird’s important and largely compelling claim, written for the same symposium. After briefly describing Professor Baird’s central argument about the role of unwritten rules, my essay makes two simple points. First, what’s good for bankruptcy insiders is not always good for everyone. William Douglas and other New Deal reformers believed that insiders’ temptation to favor their own interests poisoned the entire reorganization enterprise in their era. Although the reformers’ complaints were often exaggerated, it is important to recognize the costs of a system run by insiders. Second, the essay argues that bankruptcy’s written rules—by which I mean both statutory provisions and the parties’ contracts—still matter, and they matter a lot.

Bankruptcy process, bankruptcy rules, pre-bankruptcy contracts, post-petition contracts, distributional rules, absolute priority, restructuring support agreements

Publication Title

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

Publication Citation

36 Emory Bankr. Dev. J. 733 (2020)

Repository Citation

Skeel, David A. Jr., "Unwritten Rules and the New Contract Paradigm" (2020). All Faculty Scholarship . 2183. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2183

Link to SSRN

Since June 09, 2020

Included in

Bankruptcy Law Commons , Commercial Law Commons , Contracts Commons , Courts Commons

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS

Penn Carey Law

• Law School Homepage
• Biddle Law Library
• Faculty Profiles
• Collections
• Penn Carey Law Authors
• Penn Carey Law Journals

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Back to Faculty Bibliography

Stephen E. Sachs, The "Unwritten Constitution" and Unwritten Law , 2013 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1797 (2013).

Abstract: America’s Unwritten Constitution is a prod to the profession to look for legal rules outside the Constitution’s text. This is a good thing, as outside the text there’s a vast amount of law—the everyday, nonconstitutional law, written and unwritten, that structures our government and society. Despite the book’s unorthodox framing, many of its claims can be reinterpreted in fully conventional legal terms, as the product of the text’s interaction with ordinary rules of law and language.This very orthodoxy, though, may undermine Akhil Amar’s case that America truly has an “unwritten Constitution.” In seeking to harmonize the text with deep theories of political legitimacy and with daily practice in the courts, the book may venture further than our conventional legal sources can support. To put it another way, anything the “unwritten Constitution” can do, unwritten law can do better; and what unwritten law can’t do, probably shouldn’t be tried. Yet whether or not we accept the idea of an unwritten constitution, by refocusing attention on America’s rich tradition of unwritten law, Amar performs a great service to constitutional scholarship.

Not Unwritten, After All?

The connection between constitutional text and constitutional norms

• David A. Strauss
• American Constitutionalism — Written, Unwritten, and Living  by  Akhil Reed Amar
• See full issue

If you want to understand American constitutional law, you have to read the U.S. Constitution. That seems obvious. But you can’t just read the U.S. Constitution, because there is more to constitutional law than that. The very first page of Akhil Reed Amar’s impressive book, America’s Unwritten Constitution , makes this point well. Nothing in the text of the Constitution explicitly forbids racial segregation. The text does not explicitly say that the Bill of Rights applies to the states. “One person, one vote”; “the rule of law”; “checks and balances”; “separation of powers” – none of these phrases are in the text of the Constitution (p. ix). There are many more examples. These add up to an “unwritten Constitution,” Professor Amar says, that, together with the document, make up “America’s working constitutional system” (p. ix). Of course the elements of the unwritten Constitution are written down in various places, but not, at least not explicitly, in the famous document.

America’s Unwritten Constitution asks the important questions: If there is an unwritten Constitution, where do its “provisions” come from? How do we figure out what it requires, with enough precision to resolve specific legal issues? What, exactly, is the relationship between the written and unwritten Constitutions (pp. x—xi)? The book does not answer these questions systematically; what Amar said in an earlier article, that “[t]hese questions are best answered by example rather than by a priori reasoning,” captures his method here as well. The book is, in a sense, a demonstration, not an explanation, of how the unwritten Constitution works. It contains twelve chapters, each with a subtitle suggesting a different unwritten Constitution: the “Implicit Constitution,” the “Enacted Constitution,” the “Lived Constitution,” the “Doctrinal Constitution,” the “Institutional Constitution,” and others. In each chapter, Amar briefly describes a way of ascertaining the contents of the unwritten Constitution; then, in the bulk of the chapter, he makes detailed arguments for specific legal conclusions on a wide range of subjects: for example, why freedom of speech, or women’s equality, or certain executive branch powers are properly seen as part of the Constitution.

Amar says that what unites each chapter is the “methodological tool” (p. xv) he uses to “locate and bring into sharp focus the unwritten substantive do’s and don’ts” (p. xiv). But it is clear that the author’s heart is much less in the brief and abstract justifications for using the various “methodological tool[s]” than in the specific arguments that apply those tools. Those arguments are lively, ingenious, and erudite.

Several things about this book are particularly striking. First, despite the book’s title, the star of the show is, in fact, the written Constitution. Many principles that one might think are unwritten turn out – when Amar is done with them – to be in the written Constitution itself, once you read the written Constitution the right way. That is not true of each of his unwritten Constitutions, but I think it can fairly be described as one of the main themes of the book – not surprisingly, given Amar’s well-known earlier work.

Second – again despite the book’s title, which suggests a description of existing constitutional norms – Amar often defends some surprising and unconventional views about constitutional law. The Guarantee Clause of Article IV, the Ninth Amendment, the Citizenship and Privileges or Immunities Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, and, glancingly at least, the Titles of Nobility and Bill of Attainder Clauses of Article I, as well as some other provisions – all are interpreted in ways that would surprise someone who, for example, learned constitutional law from Supreme Court opinions. Generally – and again despite the title of the book – Amar’s unconventional readings are designed to show that established principles of constitutional law that might seem to be “unwritten” are in fact securely connected to the written Constitution.

Third, while the book is filled with surprising interpretations and arguments, in the end it does not call for a large-scale reformation of constitutional law. Amar disagrees with his share of Supreme Court decisions: the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule gets particularly rough treatment, and it is not alone. But his views about how cases should come out, unlike many of his challenging and iconoclastic arguments, are, for the most part, comfortably within conventional boundaries.

The most striking thing about the book, however, is that it is, in many ways, a tour de force. It is extraordinary both in its scope and in the erudition it displays: it is impossible to do justice, in a review, to the learning reflected in its pages. A book that is so dense in historical detail and textual argument could easily become tedious, but this book does not; every chapter is easy to read but packed with substance. The book can be a little oracular at times, and a little preachy; and I have some qualms both about the big picture it paints and about some of the specific arguments it makes. But this is, without question, a remarkable work of scholarship.

In Part I of this review, I will describe some instances in which, I think, Amar overemphasizes the role of the written Constitution in determining the shape of American constitutional law – and correspondingly understates the importance of the extratextual influences on American constitutional law that the title suggests are the subject of the book. In Part II, I will discuss the relationship between Amar’s overemphasis on the document (if that is a fair characterization) and his unconventional analysis of several issues, and I will venture some thoughts about both the foundations and the consequences of the book’s approach.

• Constitutional Law
• Legal History

April 18, 2013

More from this Issue

Developments in the law – immigrant rights & immigration enforcement, hamdan v. united states.

D.C. Circuit Interprets Military Commissions Act of 2006 to Bar Retroactive Application of Material Support Prohibition.

GSS Group Ltd. v. National Port Authority

D.C. Circuit Dismisses Suit Against National Port Authority of Liberia for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction.

Help inform the discussion

• X (Twitter)

Changing the Unwritten Rules of Presidential Leadership

Extraconstitutional norms shift when the president decides and the country agrees

On June 29, 2023, reacting to a series of Supreme Court decisions in which all six Republican-appointed justices outvoted their three Democratic-appointed colleagues, President Joseph Biden lamented that “this is not a normal court.” Asked if he would support the proposal by progressives within his party to expand the court from 9 to 13 justices, however, Biden dismissed the idea as a “mistake” that “doesn’t make sense.” 1

Nine the court would remain, even though nothing in the Constitution limits Congress’s authority to alter its size by statute. But unlike those calling for change, Biden had learned the lesson of FDR’s failed effort to “pack the Court” in 1937: nine justices, although not part of the “capital- C Constitution” (the document itself), are still part of the “small- c constitution”—the extraconstitutional rules of the game that also govern how the political system is supposed to work. 2

Or perhaps Biden overlearned that lesson. In truth, multiple changes in the small- c constitution have occurred during the past two centuries, but only after they were animated by changes in norms and their accompanying customs and expectations.

Multiple changes in the small- c constitution have occurred during the past two centuries, but only after they were animated by changes in norms.

Presidents have often animated these changes. In the Miller Center–sponsored book The Presidency: Facing Constitutional Crossroads , I discussed 10 such changes, tracing each to its historical origin. In this essay, I illustrate the argument with three: Andrew Jackson and the veto, Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and the “rhetorical presidency,” and Jimmy Carter and the creation of the modern vice presidency. 3

Andrew Jackson and the Veto

Jackson’s veto of the bill Congress passed in July 1832 to renew the Second Bank of the United States was politically important at the time. It has remained important as a precedent-setting extraconstitutional norm concerning how presidents should exercise the veto power.

Jackson regarded the bank as the leading institutional bastion of everything he opposed, especially favoritism for the Eastern financial elite.

Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky, Jackson’s Whig opponent in the forthcoming 1832 election, was so confident that bank renewal would be a winning issue that he persuaded Congress to extend the bank’s charter, four years before the existing charter was set to expire.

Although nothing in the Constitution provides any guidance about when vetoing a bill is appropriate, all of Jackson’s predecessors used the power sparingly. As the first president, George Washington established the norm that vetoes should be reserved for legislation that was of doubtful constitutionality. In the 40 years after he took office in 1789, Washington and his five successors vetoed just 10 bills, most of them minor.

Jackson interpreted the veto power differently, grounding his view in a new and expansive conception of presidential leadership. The president, Jackson believed, was a more authentic representative of the people than Congress—the only person in government who was elected by the entire electorate. Consequently, Jackson regarded the president’s judgment that an act of Congress was unwise policy as sufficient ground for a veto.

Jackson interpreted the veto power differently, grounding his view in a new and expansive conception of presidential leadership. 

In his veto message, Jackson argued that the bank was an “odious” institution and that “good policy” was reason enough for him to act. 

His veto survived a congressional vote to override. 4 Five months later, Jackson vanquished Clay, the bank’s leading advocate, by 219–49 in the Electoral College and 54 percent to 37 percent in the popular vote.

Jackson’s veto—and, just as important, the country’s agreement that it was properly cast—altered the existing norm of presidential deference to Congress and established a new norm that has endured ever since.

Jackson’s veto—and, just as important, the country’s agreement that it was properly cast—altered the existing norm of presidential deference to Congress and established a new norm that has endured ever since. Jackson vetoed 12 bills in eight years, more than all of his predecessors combined. The new norm for presidential use of the veto power was that presidents should feel free to exercise it regardless of whether they think a bill is constitutional. Jackson’s 39 successors have taken advantage of this transformation of the small- c constitution, casting a combined total of 2,568 vetoes, only 112 of which—barely 4 percent—have been overridden by Congress. 5

TR and the “Rhetorical Presidency”

To say that presidents in the 18th and 19th centuries were seen but not heard is an overstatement—but not by much. Presidential candidates were expected to stand, not run, for office, remaining silent while partisan allies campaigned on their behalf. Once in office, ceremonial speeches such as the inaugural address were acceptable, but speeches urging Congress to enact legislation or criticizing Congress for failing to do so were widely regarded as inappropriate.

Although nothing in the Constitution either encouraged or forbade presidential rhetoric aimed at influencing public opinion, the norm of reticence was no less binding for being unwritten. 

Speeches urging Congress to enact legislation or criticizing Congress for failing to do so were widely regarded as inappropriate.

In 1868, Andrew Johnson was the target of two articles of impeachment for speeches “attempt[ing] to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach the Congress of the United States.” 6

One-third of a century later, the public was ready for a different style of presidential leadership. The rise of powerful national corporations had caused more people to turn to the national government—in particular, to its most visible institution, the presidency—to provide a countervailing source of power. In response, Roosevelt ushered in what political scientist Jeffrey K. Tulis has called the “rhetorical presidency”—that is, the use of popular rhetoric as a principal tool of presidential leadership. 7 Its origins lay in Roosevelt’s campaign to persuade Congress to enact the Hepburn Act, a bill to enhance the regulatory power of the federal government over the nation’s railroads. 

The public was ready for a different style of presidential leadership. 

The act was opposed by conservative senators in the president’s own party, who managed to stifle it in committee. Roosevelt decided to appeal “over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people who were masters of both of us.” 8

TR’s speechmaking tour of the country had the desired effect, and the Hepburn Act was passed into law in 1906. The small- c constitution’s unwritten rule concerning presidential rhetoric gave way to the new unwritten rule that “going public” is part of the president’s job description. 9  

The small- c constitution’s unwritten rule concerning presidential rhetoric gave way to the new unwritten rule that “going public” is part of the president’s job description.

The subsequent arrival of radio, then television, and then social media as means of mass communication only enhanced the rhetorical presidency.

Jimmy Carter and the Modern Vice Presidency

Not every American admires Congress, agrees with the Supreme Court, or supports the president. But, except for the vice presidency, no constitutionally created office has been the object of ridicule. Even some vice presidents have ruefully joined in the fun. John Nance Garner, who was FDR’s first vice president, famously declared: “The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.” 10

Historically, the vice presidency’s main problem was rooted in its original design. The Constitutional Convention assigned the vice president just two duties: to preside over the Senate (a role that is significant only when a tie vote needs to be broken) and to step in if something bad happens to the president, which it usually does not. These duties stranded the vice president in a constitutional no-man’s land, somewhere between the executive and legislative branches and fully at home in neither.

These duties stranded the vice president in a constitutional no-man’s land, somewhere between the executive and legislative branches and fully at home in neither.

President Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976 launched a change in the small-c constitutional vice presidency that has endured even though the Constitution remains substantially unaltered.  During the half-century that followed the office grew both in prestige and influence.  Much of the credit for this transformation lay in the agreement forged between Carter and Vice President Walter F. Mondale in response to a memo that Mondale wrote to Carter on December 9, 1976, six weeks before the beginning of their term.

Mondale knew from conversations with his political mentor, former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey, how marginal a job the vice presidency could be.  Mondale’s memo to Carter proposed that his primary role be as “general adviser” to the president, consulted on virtually every matter that crossed the president’s desk. As vice president, Mondale argued, he was in a “unique position” to perform this role as “the only other public official elected nationwide . . . able to look at the government as a whole.” 11

Mondale’s memo to Carter proposed that his primary role be as “general adviser” to the president, consulted on virtually every matter that crossed the president’s desk.

To make his advice useful, Mondale continued, he would need access to the full range of information that Carter received, a professional staff, the right to participate in all important meetings and, most important, “access to you” in the form of weekly private sessions and an office in the West Wing of the White House.

As a former state governor with no experience in Washington, Carter realized that he needed a vice president with federal experience to help him meet the challenges of his new job.  Mondale had served two terms in the Senate when Carter selected him as his running mate.  He approved Mondale’s memo in full, not just on paper but in practice throughout his presidency. Subsequent presidents, most of them with little Washington experience themselves, and vice presidents (most of them with considerable Washington experience) have accepted the new norms concerning the vice presidency and institutionalized them. 12

Subsequent presidents, most of them with little Washington experience themselves, and vice presidents (most of them with considerable Washington experience) have accepted the new norms concerning the vice presidency and institutionalized them.

In obvious ways, the development of the American presidency has been affected by amendments to the Constitution concerning, for example, presidential disability and the two-term limit. In less obvious ways, the small- c constitutional presidency has also evolved. It has done so when a president decides the time for change is right and the country agrees.

The framers’ design of the presidency was clearly a sketch more than a blueprint. But in ways that involved adapting norms concerning the office to changing times and circumstances, the small- c constitution has enabled the capital- C Constitution to fulfill what James Wilson—the most influential delegate to the Constitutional Convention on presidential matters—identified as the main qualities that the executive was meant to bring to constitutional government: “energy, responsibility, and dispatch.”

Holly Otterbein and Zach Montellaro, “Biden Still Won’t Nuke the Court. But He Is Upping His Criticism of It,” Politico , June 29, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/30/biden-supreme-court-reform-00104484 .

On FDR and the Supreme Court, see Michael Nelson, Vaulting Ambition: FDR’s Campaign to Pack the Supreme Court (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2023).

Michael Nelson, “Crossroads of the (C)onstitutional Presidency: How Ten Extraconstitutional Landmarks Shaped the Office,” in The Presidency: Facing Constitutional Crossroads , ed. Michael Nelson and Barbara A. Perry (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 28–48.

Andrew Jackson, “Veto Message [of the Reauthorization of Bank of the United States]” (July 10, 1832), American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/veto-message-the-re-authorization-bank-the-united-states .

United States Senate, “Vetoes, 1789 to Present,” https://www.senate.gov/legislative/vetoes/vetoCounts.htm .

U.S. Congress, “Articles of Impeachment Exhibited by the House of Representatives” (March 4, 1868), American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/articles-impeachment-exhibited-the-house-representatives .

Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).

Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt , vol. 20 (New York: Scribner’s, 1926), 342.

Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership , 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).

The oft-quoted “warm spit” in this statement is the G-rated version.

“Transcription of 1976 Carter-Mondale Memo”: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000173-eae0-d94e-a1f7-eef110b00000

Sidney M. Milkis and Michael Nelson, The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2021 (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2023), chap. 15.

Michael Nelson

Michael Nelson is Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Miller Center. He has published multiple books, including  Resilient America: Electing Nixon, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government , which won the Richard Neustadt Award for best book on the presidency published in 2014. Other recent books are  43: Inside the George W. Bush Presidency  (2022),  The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2018 , with Sidney Milkis (2020);  The Presidency and the Political System , 12th ed.(2020); and  The Elections of 2016  (2017). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the  Journal of Politics and Political Science Quarterly , and in periodicals such as  Virginia Quarterly Review , Claremont Review of Books , and  Chronicle of Higher Education .

Conference on the American presidency

On October 19–20, 2023, the Miller Center convened leading experts on the American presidency—senior officials of Democratic and Republican administrations, along with top scholars and journalists—to discuss challenges facing the presidency and potential solutions

Unwritten Law in Society Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Civic sense and proprietary, purposes of unwritten codes, conclusions, reference list.

While most of the citizens of democratic countries are governed by written and practiced laws, it is also seen that unwritten or tacit laws form a major part of our working and living lives. In his newspaper article entitled “how Written rules circumscribe our lives” Bob Greence dwells upon the strengths of tacit codes in our lives.

He discussed about the need to maintain civic discipline and conduct in public. These things include the need to speak softly in public places. He cites the example of how a man shouted at his partner while having food r in a restaurant. No matter what public position or justification this held, it intruded into the space of others and defies civic norms of public behavior and deserves to be condemned.

He also cites the case of a person who uses to pinch the tips left by customers for bartenders before the poor man could collect it from the table. This man positioned him in such a position from where he was able to have a view of the tables and the tips left at the tables, and conveniently stole the tips meant for others. Such deviant behavior , according to Bob Greence defied social conventions and moral moorings.

Unwritten law is an essential rule within society which needed to be obeyed. If people did not have good control over their emotions we would be no better than animals relying on their instinct, and not intelligence. The power of superior intellect and judgment are given by nature to humans for superior thoughts, actions and words and to a very large extent, determine his happiness and contentment on earth. People may tread on others and become wealthy and prosperous but never happy in its true sense. “People should be treated as individuals with rights to be honored and defended.

Respect empowers others to claim their rights and to achieve their potential. Respect for the rights of other people is the basis on which individuals become members of a community and accept their social responsibilities to behave with integrity … Demonstrating respect for persons requires, for example, dealing with disagreements by reasoned argument rather than by using language (words, style and tone) that have the effect of inappropriately attacking or demeaning the listener.” (Code of ethics & code of conduct, 2010, para.11).

Unwritten codes need to serve three main purposes:

• Represent respect for others in public places
• Foster and gain a better knowledge and understanding of culture
• Clarity and coherence in communicating thoughts and actions to others.

While there may be codes and edicts that govern public behavior the dereliction of which could cause confinement, arrest and prosecution, besides other civil or criminal punishment. But the enforcement of these is also major aspects that need to be looked into. Even if written codes cannot be enforceable due to lack of witnesses or evidence, the unwritten or tacit codes could set the tone for justice and fair play. Thus if the unwritten law of respect for others are followed, it is possible that many violations could be avoided. Again, the knowledge of culture stems not only from promoting and enhancing one’s own culture, but is also in terms of caring for the cultures of others.

Perhaps one of the major areas in which humans fail is to express facts and opinions such that the listener or receiver is able to understand it in the same objective for which it was intended. Human beings are all different in many respects and their outlook and perspective of life may also differ. Even an individual himself or herself may have different emotions at different times of the day and in different places. Human personalities are complex, and even a person may not truly know oneself. Thus, under such circumstances, the enforcement of unwritten laws or Tacit Code of Conduct needs to be respected and honored.

Therefore it has become necessary to seek out ways and means by which time honored dogmas, rules and precepts need to be incorporated in to the lives of people in order to allow them to lead better lives for themselves and others with whom they come into contact. These laws are voluntarily accepted by humans as against the other laws that are enforced and thrust upon people; humans generally believe in doing acts voluntarily and in a better way rather than to have them forced upon them, which disturbs their mental equilibrium, rendering them incapable of doing even what they are quite capable of doing.

That being said it is now necessary to consider how tacit laws in relation to written laws are more effective. As mentioned earlier, Principles serve to guide people in their everyday lives like a friend and guide. During the time of dilemma, they offer correct solutions to resolve the issues in the best interests of all. Besides, these axioms and tenets of living offer solutions to handle vexatious problems that are saddled to lives of people and help them to overcome without fear.

Code of ethics & code of conduct . (2010). The University of Western Australia. Web.

• Framing Class: Reading Comprehension
• Xenophobia - The Fear of Foreigners
• Themis Goddess and Her Archetype
• Comparative Governments. British Political System
• Natural and Positive Law
• Girls in Gangs: Reasons that Make Girls Join the Gang
• Divorce Rate in the United States
• Child Pornography and Its Regulation
• Teen Pregnancy Problem Overview
• Commodity Fetishism Explained
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, December 20). Unwritten Law in Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/unwritten-law-in-society/

"Unwritten Law in Society." IvyPanda , 20 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/unwritten-law-in-society/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Unwritten Law in Society'. 20 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Unwritten Law in Society." December 20, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/unwritten-law-in-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Unwritten Law in Society." December 20, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/unwritten-law-in-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Unwritten Law in Society." December 20, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/unwritten-law-in-society/.

UChicago Essay Examples

Uchicago essay examples .

As one of the world’s top-ranked universities, the University of Chicago deeply values inquisitive and creative learners. For that reason, UChicago essays that worked are some of the most captivating and unique college essays out there. Hopeful applicants will benefit from reading UChicago essay examples. In fact, beyond just reading UChicago essay examples, closely analyzing UChicago essays that worked is an excellent way to prepare. 

Are you thinking of applying to UChicago but not sure what goes into writing UChicago essays that worked? You’re in the right place! In this article, we’re going to read some UChicago essay examples and see why they impressed admissions.

In this UChicago Essay Examples article we’ll look at: 

• Recent UChicago essay prompts
• Several real University of Chicago essay examples
• Why the UChicago essay matters 
• Tips for writing a UChicago essay, and more!

As one of the best universities in Illinois , the Midwest , and the world, UChicago demands top-tier essays. And with our expert analysis of UChicago essay examples, you’ll be better prepared to craft your own.. 

How many supplemental essays does UChicago have?

There are two supplemental essays required for the UChicago application. These prompts can be found on the university’s site as well as in the Coalition Application or Common Application . It’s important to note these prompts—and, accordingly, UChicago essay examples—vary from year to year. However, you’ll find similarities among UChicago essays that worked regardless of the prompt. 

The first prompt is required of all students and is essentially a “why UChicago” essay. A “why UChicago” essay that works will follow the general framework of any other “why school” essay. 

UChicago essay examples for the second required essay change the most between admissions cycles. This is because the second essay responds to one of several prompts created by UChicago students.

For both required UChicago essay examples, there is no set word limit. However, the University of Chicago admissions office suggests 650 words for the UChicago extended essay example. As for the “why UChicago” essay, the suggested word limit is lower, at 250-500 words. Regardless of your final word count, UChicago essays that worked use their words effectively, as we’ll see soon.

What are the University of Chicago supplemental essay prompts?

UChicago essays that worked will respond to the unique prompts in an innovative and inquisitive manner. That being said, UChicago essay examples vary greatly as the prompts change yearly. 

UChicago posts its current prompts as well as some of the favorite prompts of the past years. In fact, you can even find past favorite University of Chicago prompts from as far back as the nineties. As prompts change, so do UChicago essay examples; however, elements of Uchicago essays that worked are pretty constant. With that said, let’s look at the current UChicago essay prompts.

The first UChicago essay prompt is required of all students:

How does the university of chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to uchicago., the second essay—the uchicago extended essay.

The second required essay for the UChicago application is inspired by current students. In the most recent application cycle, it asks students to respond to one of the following options:

Essay Option 1:

Exponents and square roots, pencils and erasers, beta decay and electron capture. name two things that undo each other and explain why both are necessary. – inspired by emmett cho, class of 2027, essay option 2:, “where have all the flowers gone” – pete seeger. pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer. – inspired by ryan murphy, ab’21, essay option 3:, “vlog,” “labradoodle,” and “fauxmage.” language is filled with portmanteaus. create a new portmanteau and explain why those two things are a “patch” (perfect match). – inspired by garrett chalfin, class of 2027, essay option 4:, a jellyfish is not a fish. cat burglars don’t burgle cats. rhode island is not an island. write an essay about some other misnomer, and either come up with and defend a new name for it or explain why its inaccurate name should be kept. – inspired by sonia chang, class of 2025, and mirabella blair, class of 2027, essay option 5:, despite their origins in the gupta empire of india or ancient egypt, games like chess or bowling remain widely enjoyed today. what modern game do you believe will withstand the test of time, and why – inspired by adam heiba, class of 2027, essay option 6:, there are unwritten rules that everyone follows or has heard at least once in their life. but of course, some rules should be broken or updated. what is an unwritten rule that you wish didn’t exist (our custom is to have five new prompts each year, but this year we decided to break with tradition. enjoy) – inspired by maryam abdella, class of 2026, essay option 7:, and, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option in the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). be original, creative, thought provoking. draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the university of chicago; take a little risk, and have fun.

Soon, we’re going to check out some UChicago essay examples. However, you may notice that our UChicago essay examples don’t respond to the current prompts. That doesn’t mean that these UChicago essay examples aren’t helpful! Responses to these prompts will vary greatly based on each student’s story. All UChicago essays that worked are valuable tools to aid you in writing your own college essays. 

Demystifying the UChicago Extended Essay

When considering how to write a UChicago extended essay example, think about how unique all of the UChicago uncommon essay examples are. There is no one-size-fits-all way to craft impressive UChicago essay examples; rather, there are infinite ways to approach them. 

While that may feel overwhelming for some students, try to focus on the creative liberty the UChicago essay examples allow. Because the University of Chicago essay examples are so unique, students have a grand opportunity to express themselves. 

What’s the goal of UChicago essay examples? Well, the UChicago extended essay example has a slightly different goal than “why UChicago” essay examples. The prompts are admittedly “provocative.” After all, this competitive university wants the most curious, inquisitive minds in the nation. Accordingly, successful UChicago essay examples prove that admitted students aren’t afraid of thinking out of the box. 

In the end, although the prompts seem quite different from other college essays, the goal is the same. UChicago essays that worked share more about each student: their interests, background, life experiences, or tastes. The exciting part about the UChicago uncommon essay examples is the rare opportunity to embrace your quirkiness or get serious. The choice is yours! 

UChicago Extended Essay Example

The first of our UChicago uncommon essay examples touches on some themes common in more traditional diversity/background/life experiences prompts. Read the first of our UChicago essay examples closely. How does the writer share more about themselves in an eloquent manner while still responding to this unique prompt?

UChicago Extended Essay Prompt:

A neon installation by the artist jeppe hein in chicago’s charles m. harper center asks this question for us: “why are you here and not somewhere else” (there are many potential values of “here”, but we already know you’re “here” to apply to the university of chicago; pick any”here” besides that one). – inspired by erin hart, class of 2016..

In a culture where Bollywood’s ‘item girls’ receive fame and glory for their provocative dancing and scant clothing, I am often filled with shame and even disgust for my own Indian heritage. Films and television soaps reinforce gender stereotypes of dominating male characters, while their female counterparts are either passive homemakers or desirable ‘item girls.’ These movies are mainstream and celebrated in my culture, watched by children and grandparents alike.

How can I embrace and respect my culture if this inequality pervades? Because I notice these things, and define them as blatantly sexist, does that make me less Indian?

In a culture where dowries are still regularly exchanged between families, I cannot help but notice the objectification of women that is culturally acceptable and ubiquitous. I cannot understand how Indian women all over the world permit their future family to request money and goods equivalent to their supposed ‘worth.’ This is the feminist and Western approach to dowries However, if I look closer, there can be a degree of justification to this practice. The parents-in-law are given money and luxurious goods for the bride in order to protect her if her husband and breadwinner can no longer work.

While this reasoning does offer some justification for the persistent existence of dowries in the 21st century, it brings new objections to the presumption that the bride will not contribute to the family’s income. I see the world through two lenses as the clash between Eastern and Western culture pervades my every thought and action.

During rare family gatherings, the few times I get to see my extended family, the joy of the reunion is mellowed by what I see. The men and children lounge into the couches, sipping tea and crunching bhel (Indian snack), while chuckling and debating over current events. In the kitchen congregate the women, busy cooking and giggling with each other, but in a constant frenzy to prepare the next meal or brew more tea. Distracted by the simmering chai, this room lacks the same fervent discussion of prevalent global issues. The living room and kitchen stand divided between the men and women. As a female young-adult, I am confused as to where I belong- to which room do I go? While we are one family, the divide remains firm. I feel sick to my stomach, as I alone perceive the waves of sexism that ripple beneath our facade.

Adding to this confusion are my looks. I am a rich mocha, but with too much crème, and suddenly I no longer look Indian. My unique ringlets add fuel to my accusers’ claims. Too pale, and too many curls. I have been called nearly every ethnicity in the globe, from African-American to Latina to Russian. When I explain my Indian heritage, aghast, they cry, “But you can’t be Indian!” Hurt, I leave questioning my appearance and the personality I project.

On the other hand, Hindu culture reveres female empowerment through the worship of powerful female deities such as Kali and Lakshmi. This hypocrisy baffles me. Why I am here? Why am I Indian, when everyone questions my ethnicity, and I, myself, question certain practices?

I realize, I am here to question and ponder, because thinking about the life and environment in which you live is critical. Because the fact remains that I absolutely love my culture. The passionate, unrequited urges to dance at every occasion in a flurry of vibrancy cannot be found anywhere else. I love the intrinsic and irrevocable respect for the knowledge and experiences elders bring. Also, I appreciate the emphasis on family as ultimate supporters and best friends. I even love the sense of duty and service that being a daughter brings. Outwardly, perhaps, I don’t conform to the typical model of an Indian girl, reserved and soft-spoken, with thick, straight hair and rich mocha skin, but I have the heart and soul of one.

Why This UChicago Essay Worked

With endless ways to respond, this writer’s UChicago extended essay example offers the reader a unique look into her life. She contemplates the many clashes in her own culture and her way of thinking and navigating the world. However, in her final reflection on precisely why she’s “here,” she affirms the centrality of her culture to her sense of self. 

The author of the first of our UChicago essays that worked dissects aspects of her culture that disquiet her. The reader sees an inquisitive person who’s always questioned cultural norms that others within her family might not have. Of course, she doesn’t completely reject a culture because she doesn’t completely agree with it. On the contrary, she’s able to find and appreciate the parts that have shaped her into who she is. Additionally, while she may not exemplify what’s “typical” of her culture, she recognizes that it’s nevertheless intrinsic to her experience. And she loves it. 

UChicago essays that worked often show growth. In the first of our UChicago uncommon essay examples, the writer shows how she’s navigated the inner conflict she experiences around her culture. In the end, even though she doesn’t come to a conclusive answer, the writer accepts the ongoing process of questioning. Moreover, she recognizes her culture and her surroundings aren’t mutually incompatible, but that she must find her own balance. This willingness to accept ambiguity and keep questioning is certainly important at an elite institution like UChicago. 

More UChicago essay examples

Let’s continue with the UChicago uncommon essay examples. Again, as you read this UChicago extended essay example, note features common among college essays—not just UChicago essay examples. 

UChicago Essay Prompt:

Share with us a few of your favorite books, poems, authors, films, plays, pieces of music, musicians, performers, paintings, artists, blogs, magazines, or newspapers. feel free to touch on one, some, or all of the categories listed, or add a category of your own., uchicago essay example.

Downton Abbey makes me fantasize about the elaborate fashions of the 1900s, with long taffeta gowns and hats bursting with feathers and jewels, each lady is a vision of elegance. Each episode and season leaves me fascinated by the grandeur and magnificence of the house, which stands in stark contrast with the peeling grey wood of the downstairs kitchens and servant halls. The servant’s staircase is shabby and dull, and runs parallel to the vibrant tapestry-covered marble staircase for those upstairs. I am puzzled by the smooth refinement of upstairs, juxtaposed with the panting bustle of downstairs.

I constantly marvel at the writers’ ability to craft characters to whom I can relate, despite the gap of a century. The world they lived in is so vastly different from today, yet people of all ages experience comparable emotions such as jealousy, passion, and shame. I am left breathless by the fact that each character faces similar challenges of familial disappointment, honor, and struggle to find a purpose in life; just as we do today.

Technology may change, but human nature remains the same. In addition, the rich historical background of Downtown Abbey provides intricate context to the larger historical events I learn in class. I am transported from merely learning about the implications of World War 1 and the Spanish Influenza, to learning about how these impacted the daily lives of people.

Downton Abbey is more than merely a television show to me. Calling my grandmother in England to discuss in the elaborate plot twists and new character developments has brought us together for a shared passionate experience in the same living room. We avidly discuss Mary’s slew of new suitors and Daisy’s latest heartbreak via video chat. Excitedly we giggle over birth of baby George and Ms. Pattmore’s witty retorts. In a unique twist, Downton Abbey has become something that transcends the thousands of miles that separate us.

In addition, Pride and Prejudice couples my love of fairytales with my irrevocable feminism.

Forever imprinted in my mind is the first time I attempted to read Jane Austen’s masterpiece, as a plucky third grader who brought the book to reading circle. At that young age, I was merely fascinated by the drama of five girls, each with their own tantalizing personality. But now, I realize the subtle life lessons concealed within each page. This novel makes me squash my teenage urges to judge and categorize people instantly, instead realizing that there is something to be learned from all people from all walks of life- especially the people from whom I am the most different. This subtle yet sparkling wit of Mr. Bennett reminds me to laugh more at the chaos and confusion life often brings.

The dysfunctional and hilarious family dynamic provides comedic relief and reminds me of the 19th century equivalent of a reality show. I admire Jane Austen’s subtle yet thought-provoking feminism through Elizabeth, as she pokes fun at her best friend for marrying without love for money and position, something she could never do. Also, I am inspired by Elizabeth’s passionate resolve against being ‘anybody’s fool! I am drawn by my love for English literature, which provides a window to discover historical intricacies that mirror a universal human experience.

Why This UChicago Essay Stood Out

The second of our UChicago essay examples hooks the reader and shows the author’s ability to connect with others. Much more than simply saying, “I like Downton Abbey because of the costumes”, the writer describes in detail the wardrobe and architecture. UChicago essays that worked provide ample details to help the main idea—and the writer—come to life for the reader.

Then the writer goes on to show how humans share the same feelings and experiences, which transcend time periods. This shows the reader how the writer is capable of empathizing and relating to people even through their differences. As the author points out, human nature is the same no matter the time period. Their personal understanding of this will ideally motivate humanistic, world-changing work at UChicago and beyond.

Focusing on the personal impact

Although this writer includes their grandmother in the essay, notice that the focus comes back to a lesson. Writing about experiences with friends or family in college essays is by no means off limits. However, those who do so should use a strategy like this essay. In other words, the essay should ultimately discuss personal impacts or lessons on character. 

Finally, the writer touches on the book Pride and Prejudice and the feminism portrayed within the book. Through this point, we learn more of the author’s values as well as traits in characters—in people—that they admire. She again ties the book to the underlying theme of her essay which is the universal human experience. 

This multifaceted essay engages the reader, answers the prompt, and allows some insight into the author’s values and way of thinking. 

How do you write a UChicago essay?

Logically, University of Chicago essay examples vary: a UChicago extended essay example differs in many ways from UChicago essay examples. However, while UChicago essays that worked may look very different, they serve the same greater purpose. Above all, writers must show admissions who they are and why they belong at UChicago. 

“Why UChicago” essay examples will follow the format of a “why school” essay. Students should get specific as they reference opportunities, programs, faculty, or extracurriculars found only at UChicago. Additionally, UChicago essay examples should demonstrate just why the writer belongs on campus. How do your values align with those of the university? What will you bring to the school’s community? UChicago essays that worked should also show that UChicago is a good fit for the student—it goes both ways. 

More ‘Why School’ essay examples

Before writing, check out some successful “why school” essay examples from a variety of different schools. Of course, pay special attention to the “why UChicago” essay examples. Additionally, don’t miss essay tips from the University of Chicago admissions team. Given the competitiveness of UChicago admittance, UChicago essays that worked must all stand out.

Why This College Essay Sample

As for the UChicago uncommon essay examples, they can be approached in a myriad of ways. Firstly, be sure to choose the topic that excites you the most. Which immediately catches your eye? If you can’t decide, brainstorm for each first to see what you can write. Then, choose the topic with the most potential for a meaningful essay you want to write. Successful UChicago uncommon essay examples are founded on genuine excitement about the essay, so choose a topic that excites you. 

You may want to free write to get your ideas flowing. From there you can choose the “meat” of your essay out of a slew of words. University of Chicago essay examples must be unique to get you admitted. UChicago essay examples that worked ranged from serious to humorous. Don’t be afraid to have fun and get creative. The main goal is to share with admissions more about yourself. And, of course, show off your writing chops!

Determining a College Essay Topic: Reflection Exercises to Try

Does UChicago care about supplemental essays?

In short, yes, absolutely! Understanding why different University of Chicago essay examples had success will do wonders for students writing their essays. The essays are a pivotal part of the UChicago application. And as one of the best universities in the nation, UChicago wants students with well-crafted essays

Of course, there are many factors that contribute to college acceptance, such as GPA and extracurriculars. Students will want to polish each part of the application, which starts early with your high school curriculum choices.

Making sure that you meet all of the University of Chicago requirements and the UChicago application deadline is also imperative. After all, there’s no use in writing perfect UChicago essay examples if your application is incomplete or late. Start planning your application early so you have documents in hand well before the deadline. With this in mind, most colleges use a holistic evaluation process when considering candidates. With such unique essay prompts, it’s clear that University of Chicago admissions wants students who rise to the occasion. That means students who passionately, creatively, and inquisitively respond to the prompts. 

You’ll notice that all the UChicago essay examples provide some valuable insight into the writer’s life and personality. These wouldn’t have been apparent from other parts of the application. That is to say, your essays should help to fill in your picture, so to speak. Admissions officers read essays to learn more about students to ensure that their values and goals align with the university. 

Need more help with your UChicago essays?

While we’ve checked out a couple of UChicago essays that worked, there are plenty more resources on the topic! In fact, you can check out more University of Chicago essay examples and see just why they worked, too. Reading UChicago uncommon essay examples will help inspire you to write your best UChicago extended essay example. 

The UChicago acceptance rate is one of the most selective in the nation at 5.4% . In light of that, applicants should do everything possible to make their application stand out. Read our how to get into UChicago guide for more tips on being a competitive candidate. 

While our “how to get into” guides cover each step of the application process, we have additional resources beyond UChicago essay examples. Watch our webinar for more valuable insight on how to write and edit your own UChicago essays. You can also take a look at UChicago admissions’ announcement of the most recent prompts in the video below.

Chicago Essay Examples – 5 Takeaways

What have we learned from these UChicago uncommon essay examples? Here are 5 key things to keep in mind to make sure that your University of Chicago essay examples are successful. 

5 Tips for Writing Chicago Essay Examples

1. start early.

This goes for all aspects of the college journey, from the demographic info to the essays. The UChicago application deadline can creep up with everything else busy high schoolers have going on. Don’t let it take you by surprise! Specifically, successful University of Chicago essay examples have almost certainly undergone more than one revision. Start your essays well before the UChicago application deadline to make plenty of time to brainstorm, outline, draft, and edit. Before applying, check out all of the application deadline options to see what works best for you!

2. Choose your topic carefully

In order to write your best essay, you’ll want to choose the topic that most excites you. Which prompt caught your immediate attention? And, can you respond fully to the prompt in a way that shows more of your personality and values to the University of Chicago admissions team? The strongest University of Chicago essay examples brimming with passionate language and excitement.

3. Get creative

You’ll notice that UChicago uncommon essay examples usually hook the reader. This is where the favorite writing phrase comes in handy: show, don’t tell. When writing your essays, don’t merely list your points. Captivate the reader with descriptive language and attention-grabbing narrative strategies. The successful University of Chicago examples almost read like a story that you just don’t want to put down. 

4. Meet the requirements

While there is no official word limit for the UChicago uncommon essay examples, there are “recommendations”. Successful University of Chicago essay examples are often 250–500 words for the first prompt and about 650 for the second. Obviously, be sure to answer both required essays!

5. Show who you are

This is the most important part of all college essays. Of course, comprehensively answering the prompt is also vital, but applicants must also tell admissions about themselves. Don’t just repeat other parts of your application; use the essays to share something about yourself that admissions wouldn’t see otherwise. Most importantly, be yourself! One of the most common mistakes applicants make is trying to write something that University of Chicago admissions officers want to read. Answer the prompts in an authentic and unique way. 

Overall, remember that UChicago uncommon essay examples are an opportunity to stand out among a pool of qualified candidates. At one of the most selective universities in the nation, UChicago uncommon essay examples catch the eye of the admissions team. So, be sure to read several UChicago uncommon essay examples possible before starting your own. They’ll surely spark inspiration as well as show what’s worked in the past. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed after dissecting the UChicago uncommon essay examples, don’t worry! CollegeAdvisor’s Admissions Experts help students in every step of the college application journey, specifically with the University of Chicago requirements. They offer personalized support with everything from creating a college list to writing essays to applying for financial aid. 

Don’t focus on rankings and acceptance rates when planning your essays—just creatively show who you are through your prompt responses. Have fun when writing each UChicago essay! After all, people call them “uncommon essays” for a reason. UChicago wants you to think outside of the box when responding to their one-of-a-kind UChicago essay prompts. 

Sarah Kaminski wrote this article. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.

Personalized and effective college advising for high school students.

• Advisor Application
• Popular Colleges
• Privacy Policy and Cookie Notice
• Student Login
• California Privacy Notice
• Terms and Conditions
• Your Privacy Choices

By using the College Advisor site and/or working with College Advisor, you agree to our updated Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy , including an arbitration clause that covers any disputes relating to our policies and your use of our products and services.

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

How to Write the University of Chicago Essays 2023-2024

The University of Chicago is famous for its unconventional supplemental essay prompts, and this year is no exception. While there is one traditional prompt that asks you to write about your interest in UChicago, the star of your essay package will be your response to one of seven incredibly outside-the-box prompts (with the seventh being a choose your own adventure).

Because the brainstorming you’ve done for all your other college essays is unlikely to help much here, you want to make sure you leave yourself extra time to really give these prompts the attention they require. One thing you’ll quickly realize is there’s no way to “brute force” your answer—you just need to be patient and let your ideas develop.

In this post, we’ll break down each prompt for you, so that, while you’ll still have to harness your own creativity, you can be confident in your overall approach.

Read these UChicago essay examples to inspire your writing.

Before You Begin Writing  

The University of Chicago’s prompts are famous (infamous? both?) for being different, quirky, and sometimes downright weird. Have you ever seen the word cheese or pie in a college essay prompt before? I’m guessing not. But don’t get discouraged or overwhelmed—the weirdness of the UChicago prompts makes them ripe with opportunity to explore your passions, interests, and personal oddities. 

You know that subject you avoid in casual conversation, because it turns you into a gushing ball of enthusiasm that could talk for hours ? UChicago wants to hear about it. Whether it’s feminist literature of Southeast Asia, modern perception of African art, or your job at Colonial Williamsburg, UChicago has happily passed you the mic. 

While your creative opportunity has few bounds, there are some key strategies to conquering the UChicago essays. Keep this checklist of things in mind as you write: 

Unconventional topics often require unconventional styles. 

UChicago essays should definitely be viewed as a piece of creative writing, rather than a dry analysis. When you are in college, you will be asked to write thesis-driven essays, but that’s not what the UChicago essays are asking for. You need to have a clear focus, but you should be comfortable disrupting the familiar rhythms of essay prose. This can mean vivid (and I mean vivid ) imagery, addressing the reader directly, sentence fragments, CAPS, lists, and anything else! Toss in some wild jargon from your field, phrases from another language, anything you’ve got—as long as you explain them. You should try to be imaginative, engaging, and colorful while maintaining an authentic voice and staying focused with your subject matter.

Communicate who you are as an academic.

The point of your essay is still to tell admissions officers about yourself. Give them an image of how you will perform in and contribute to an academic environment. You can’t just gush about your topic—you have to prove that you can engage with it at a highly intellectual level. Explain research protocol, cite specific books you’ve read, mention your AP and IB classes, or give examples of how you’ve collaborated with others to produce results. 

UChicago admissions don’t want a student who says “I love physics”; they want a student who says “I love physics so much that I stayed up until 4 am reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and I use meatballs to diagram the moons of Jupiter to my friends, and I took Calc III because I plan on studying mechanical engineering with a focus on aerospace materials.” Be detailed about your studies; be explicit in your interests. 

Marry yourself to your topic.

Be sure to include the first person; you are the main character here, not whatever subject you’re writing about. The subject is an avenue to tell admissions officers about you. You aren’t trying to get your latest film, your famous lasagna, or your community service project into the university— you are trying to get in . Don’t be afraid to center yourself. How do these objects from your past illuminate facets of your personality? What do your interests say about you ?

And, as always, answer the prompt!

Print out the prompt, circle key words, hang it on your mirror. Read it, then read it again, and again . Sit with the prompt, get some (probably crazy!) ideas, then repeat the process! Many UChicago prompts are dense in their weirdness. Some of them take time to even understand. Many prompts will reveal themselves to you in your everyday life (after you’ve read them over and over again). Some of them just take deep thought. The key is to keep thinking and focus on what the prompt is asking. You’ve got this!

All the UChicago Essay Prompts

Prompt 1: (required), how does the university of chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to uchicago., prompt 2: extended essay (required; choose one).

Option A: Exponents and square roots, pencils and erasers, beta decay and electron capture. Name two things that undo each other and explain why both are necessary. —Inspired by Emmett Cho, Class of 2027 

Option B: “Where have all the flowers gone?” – Pete Seeger. Pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer. —Inspired by Ryan Murphy, AB’21 

Option C: “Vlog,” “Labradoodle,” and “Fauxmage.” Language is filled with portmanteaus. Create a new portmanteau and explain why those two things are a “patch” (perfect match). —Inspired by Garrett Chalfin, Class of 2027 

Option D: A jellyfish is not a fish. Cat burglars don’t burgle cats. Rhode Island is not an island. Write an essay about some other misnomer, and either come up with and defend a new name for it or explain why its inaccurate name should be kept. —Inspired by Sonia Chang, Class of 2025, and Mirabella Blair, Class of 2027

Option E: Despite their origins in the Gupta Empire of India or Ancient Egypt, games like chess or bowling remain widely enjoyed today. What modern game do you believe will withstand the test of time, and why? —Inspired by Adam Heiba, Class of 2027 

Option F: There are unwritten rules that everyone follows or has heard at least once in their life. But of course, some rules should be broken or updated. What is an unwritten rule that you wish didn’t exist? (Our custom is to have five new prompts each year, but this year we decided to break with tradition. Enjoy!) —Inspired by Maryam Abdella, Class of 2026 

Option G: And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option! In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun!

The pressure’s on to be unique here, since EVERY SINGLE APPLICANT to UChicago will be answering this required question. Here’s what you need to do:

Provide a tangible connection to UChicago. 

This is composed of specific elements of the university that appeal to you, and UChicago’s website is a great place to delve into these. Be sure to be “particular,” as they stipulate, and give them the “specificity” they’re asking for. Examples include research opportunities at Argonne Labs, the marketing classes in the Business School, or an internship offered through the Creative Writing program. 

Don’t write about UChicago’s general attributes, like fame, prestige, or “intellectual rigor.” And please don’t try to be clever and refute the old canard that UChicago is the place “Where Fun Goes to Die.” Application readers have seen this hundreds, if not thousands of times. And besides, why talk about a tired UChicago stereotype when you can talk about something cool? 

Describe your intangible connection as well. 

How is UChicago a place that aligns with your values, dreams, and goals? How do you vibe with it? For example, if I wanted to write about the Creative Writing internship, I would state explicitly how it draws me in: 

“ I want to attend a college that values the innovative nature of indie comics publishing as much as I do. So, I’m impressed by UChicago’s commitment to providing internships in comics writing through Bult Publishing and The Artifice magazine. One of my goals as a writer is to gain firsthand experience in comics publishing, specifically small houses, and the Creative Writing program at UChicago hits the mark, resoundingly. ”

Engage with faculty and students, if possible. 

This is a perfect place to talk about specific interactions, like sitting in on an inspiring seminar during a campus visit, hearing a professor speak, or seeing how UChicago has prepared a friend for his career. 

However, always be sure to tie these experiences into your own goals and interests! For example, don’t just name-drop a certain Professor Smith. Instead, take the opportunity to find a personal connection to Smith’s research and how great UChicago is for supporting people like her. Your format should be

        Program/Individual/Major – UChicago’s Values – My values

If you want to learn more about a specific professor or their subject, don’t be afraid to politely email them or contact their department. Many love to talk about their work and their interests, or would love to put you in touch with current students. This will better inform you about the school and give you a great edge for this prompt. And, more importantly, you’ll probably get great advice for your higher education journey. Note: the earlier you prepare for this, the better!

It’s worth noting that there is no recommended essay length, but sticking to around 500 words should do the trick. It’s long enough to share the reasons you’ll thrive at UChicago, but not too long that the admissions officers will start to get bored.

Prompt 2: Extended Essay (Required, Choose One)

Choose one of the six extended essay options and upload a one- or two-page response. Please include the prompt at the top of the page.

Prompt 2, Option A

Exponents and square roots, pencils and erasers, beta decay and electron capture. name two things that undo each other and explain why both are necessary. —inspired by emmett cho, class of 2027.

Brainstorming Your Topic

You’ll notice with UChicago’s prompts that, while unusual, they are usually quite specific in what they want you to write about. The challenge is that the category is likely not something you’ve ever spent much time thinking about, so figuring out what you want to write about will take a lot more effort than, for example, explaining what a particular extracurricular activity has meant to you.

Here, one thing you have going for you is that the examples UChicago provides of “undoers” cover a pretty wide range of things. You can write about a sophisticated pair, like beta decay and electron capture, but you can also write about something as familiar as pencils and erasers.

Because of this flexibility, a good place to start your brainstorming is by thinking of some of your interests, and then trying to identify a pair of undoers related to that interest. For example, maybe you’ve always really enjoyed doing your hair and makeup. A curler and a straightener would absolutely work as a topic for this prompt. Alternatively, if you’re interested in anatomy, you could write about systole and diastole, the contraction and relaxation of the heart.

If this approach isn’t getting you anywhere, zoom further out, and think about everyday activities and objects, to see if that sparks an idea. For example, maybe you’re wandering around your house, and see your mother’s old sewing kit, which inspires you to write about scissors and thread. Or perhaps you’re thinking about your commute to school, and you realize drive and reverse would work.

Remember that the whole point is to be creative. Don’t worry about what UChicago admissions officers “want” to see, because honestly, they aren’t trying to angle you in a certain direction. If they were, they wouldn’t give you a prompt that was so difficult to brainstorm for. So if something comes to your mind that you feel excited about, run with that—don’t get in your own way by asking yourself if it’s “good enough.” As long as you’re inspired, the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.”

Tips for Writing Your Essay

The goal of your brainstorming process is to pick “two things that undo each other.” Once you have them, you can move on to drafting your actual essay, where your goal is addressing the second half of this prompt: “explain[ing] why both are necessary.”

Although UChicago doesn’t say it outright, the key to a strong response is reading the word “necessary” through a philosophical lens. UChicago doesn’t want you to literally explain why a car needs to have both drive and reverse. That approach would lead to an overly academic-feeling, dry essay, as it’s obvious why a car needs to be able to move forwards and backwards, and remember, the point of this essay is to show off your creativity.

Rather than being literal, you want to think of how you can use your undoers to make a deeper point about how you see the world. UChicago may choose unusual packaging, but this is still a college essay, so the point is ultimately to teach admissions officers something about yourself, so that they can better envision you as a member of their campus community.

Obviously, there’s no one right way to do that, but a good place to start is by thinking of how you might connect your undoers to a story from your own life. Again, this is still a college essay, and relying on specific examples (and using descriptive writing to flesh out those examples) will make your response much more engaging to read.

For example, maybe you focus your essay on a road trip your family took when you were little, and talk about how, without reverse, you would never be able to return to the places you visited where you made such fond memories, but without drive, you wouldn’t be able to continue exploring new destinations. 

You could even get more creative than that, if you’re feeling so inspired, as UChicago sets no rules for how you need to structure your response. So, to run with a different example from the “Brainstorming” section, maybe you talk about how when the heart contracts and sends blood circulating through the body is when you feel connected to the world, and can better understand the great writers of history like Shakespeare, Lao Tzu, and Ovid. When the heart relaxes, on the other hand, is when you retreat into your own thoughts, and wonder about how you can leave your own mark on this tiny planet spinning through the blackness of space.

Your approach will likely look completely different from both of these examples, but hopefully they at least help get your gears turning by giving you some general thoughts about how you might set up the “this and that” dynamic. 

Mistakes to Avoid

Pretty much the only thing we’d encourage you not to do is write about one of the pairs of undoers UChicago lists in the prompt. You may be tempted to, either because you genuinely feel a connection to one of them, or because you’re just suffering from terrible writer’s block and can’t think of anything else.

Remember, though, that the point here is creativity, so using an example UChicago came up with for you will be a letdown for admissions officers. Plus, as with any college essay, you want your response to set you apart from other applicants, and there will likely be a good number of other students who end up settling for one of the examples provided.

If you really are completely stuck, we have good news for you—there are six other prompts you can choose from here! While still unusual, of course, hopefully you’ll feel more of a kinship with one of them than you do with this one.

Prompt 2, Option B

“where have all the flowers gone” – pete seeger. pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer. —inspired by ryan murphy, ab’21.

If music is a big part of your life, either because you play an instrument or sing yourself, or because you are a fan of a certain style of music or even a particular artist, you may feel immediately drawn to this prompt. Maybe you even already have a line in mind that you want to focus your essay on.

However, you can also write a strong response to this prompt even if you have no musical experience whatsoever. The lyric or song title is just the leaping off point for the essay—the points you make can be totally unrelated to music. The only thing to be aware of is that, if you have a more limited musical background, brainstorming may take a little longer, as you’ll have to do more work to think of possibilities.

Regardless of your experience with music, or lack thereof, once you decide that you’re responding to this prompt the best place to start your brainstorming is with artists or songs you already enjoy listening to. Even though, as noted above, the lyric/title is just your starting point, the beginning of your essay will be much more engaging if you already have some sort of connection to it. Genuineness is one of the biggest things admissions officers are looking for in evaluating essays, and that’s a quality that’s impossible to fake. If you just google “famous songs with questions in the title,” your essay may start off feeling dry or impersonal.

Instead, open up your Spotify “On Repeat” playlist, and see if any of the songs there have a question in the title or the lyrics. If none of them do, turn to some of your old favorites, and scan those.

Ideally, the song you choose will already reflect something about you, both because that personal connection will, as noted above, make your essay more engaging to read, and, just as importantly, because it’ll make it more fun for you to write. Here are some examples of how your brainstorming process could go, to hopefully help get your own gears turning:

• Your parents always insisted on playing the oldies radio station when driving you to school, so you pick the line “Will the farmer push the pen, will the writer pull the plow?” from Elton John’s “Lady What’s Tomorrow.” 
• You’re a huge Taylor Swift fan, so you decide to write about her cryptic line “Do you really want to know where I was April 29th?” from the song “High Infidelity.” 
• You have a niche artist you really like, like the Swedish singer Isak Danielson, and so you choose the line “Wouldn’t you say there’s a light in the darkest moment?” from his song “Always.”

Keep in mind that literally every song is available to you, so don’t be afraid of picking a lyric that may seem silly or “out there.” For UChicago, the more unconventional your response, the better. So, if you loved the Barbie movie, you can absolutely write your essay about the line “Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility?” from Ryan Gosling’s climactic performance of “I’m Just Ken.”

Also keep in mind that you don’t have to go with the first question you find. In fact, we would suggest not doing that, unless that question really speaks to you. You want to be sure that the question you choose can support a pretty lengthy response to it.

To ensure your question works, we would encourage you to keep a list of possibilities, and once you have 5-10, think more deeply about each one, and how you would structure an essay responding to it. Whichever one makes you feel most excited/inspired is likely your golden ticket.

The number one thing to focus on in writing your actual essay is answering your question in a way that teaches UChicago admissions officers something about you. While, like with all of these prompts, creativity is a strength, this isn’t your journal, nor is it a philosophical treatise. It’s a piece of reflective writing that will hopefully help you gain acceptance to an excellent university.

To ensure your answer to the question is not merely interesting, but also contains information about your personality, think about connections between your own life and the line you’ve selected. These connections can be on the abstract side, so long as you’re confident in your writing abilities, as you’ll need to be able to explain them in a way that your readers will be able to understand. 

If you’re not sure you’ll be able to do that, we recommend sticking to more straightforward connections, as a simple essay that your reader can follow is much better than a complicated one that they can’t. To give you a general idea of how you can relate your own life to your song title/lyric, here are some examples of both simple and more complex connections you could make to the sample lyrics listed in the “Brainstorming” section above:

Simple Connections:

• You like to write, and you also like to garden, so you write an essay about how people are complicated, and can have a wide range of seemingly dissimilar skills and interests
• April 29th is your grandfather’s birthday, so you decide to write about all the wonderful celebrations you’ve had on this date when visiting him at his home in Maine
• You write about how your favorite part of any holiday is the light-up decorations on people’s houses, as they provide light even during the darkest parts of the year, and describe some of the best decorations you’ve ever seen
• You have very delicate blonde hair, and finding the right shampoo has been a lifelong odyssey, so you decide to describe some of the most humorous moments in that saga

Complex Connections:

• You write a satirical piece about a writer and farmer swapping jobs for a day, and their frustrations as they try to learn new skills, and use these characters’ interactions to flesh out some of your own opinions about the world
• April 29th is 4/29 numerically, and 29-4 is 25, while 29+4 is 33, so you write about where you see yourself being at these ages
• You love physics, so you take “darkest moment” literally, and write about black holes, from which, famously, not even light can escape, and write a fairy tale, incorporating moments from your own life, about a photon being chased across a fictional kingdom by a massive, evil black hole
• You write about the fragile “blonde” things you observe in your daily life, like a fallen yellow leaf in autumn, a delicate piece of honeycomb, and winter sunlight glinting on freshly fallen snow, and what you can learn from these things

As you can see from these examples, whether you go with a simple or complex connection, your approach can be either serious or more on the playful side. While neither is automatically better than the other, we do encourage you to have the courage to at least try something a little more lighthearted. College applications are by their nature mostly pretty dry affairs, and mixing up your tone can do a lot to liven things up and help admissions officers stay engaged. 

That being said, it’s crucial that your response feels natural and cohesive, so if the only ideas coming to your mind are more along the lines of the classic, reflective college essay structure, that’s completely fine. As noted above, the strength of your essay is determined by how much it teaches your reader about you, not by the particulars of topic, structure, or any other “nuts and bolts” detail.

The only real rule when selecting a song title or lyric is one that applies to every college essay: don’t choose one that includes profanity, or that references sex, alcohol, or other “adult” topics. While there’s nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of song in your free time, remember that applying to college is a formal process, so you want to come across as respectful and professional.

In terms of writing your actual essay, you want to be sure that you actually answer the question you’ve selected, even if you do so in an unconventional way—that is the whole point of the prompt, after all. So long as you follow our general brainstorming blueprint, and use your question as a narrow lens to scan your memories and experiences, you shouldn’t have issues with your ideas coming untethered from the question. But still take care that it doesn’t happen accidentally. 

For example, say you write all about your grandfather’s birthday celebrations, but forget to mention what date his birthday is. That’s only one missing line in a one- or two-page essay, but without it, UChicago admissions officers will have no idea what’s going on. So, make sure that somewhere, ideally early in the essay, you clearly and obviously connect the question to your broader ideas and experiences.

Prompt 2, Option C

“vlog,” “labradoodle,” and “fauxmage.” language is filled with portmanteaus. create a new portmanteau and explain why those two things are a “patch” (perfect match). —inspired by garrett chalfin, class of 2027.

When you start thinking about possible portmanteaus, your initial thought may be to begin with more examples of existing ones, like “brunch” or “spork.” We would encourage you, however, to shy away from this instinct. Your job here is to create a new portmanteau, and if you start combing through lists of existing ones, you may have trouble getting those out of your head.

Instead, as we’ve recommended in the “Brainstorming” sections of the previous prompts, turn to your own interests and experiences. Like the other prompts, this should still be an essay about you, and you’ll have a hard time with that if you’re combining two words that you have no personal connection to.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. Even if you look at the well-known examples given, there’s no real reason that, for example, cross-breeding a labrador and a poodle would necessarily result in an extremely popular new breed. Now, labradors and poodles are both kinds of dogs, so there was a pre-existing connection between these two things. But as you come up with your own portmanteau, keep in mind that the two things you combine don’t have to be obviously related. Unlike the examples given, this word probably won’t ever be used by anyone else, so the “patch” only needs to make sense to you.

For example, maybe one of your favorite memories is when a blizzard canceled school, but you and your soccer teammates met up at practice time anyways, and played “snoccer” for two hours. Snow and soccer are not obviously related—quite the opposite, in fact, as sports games are sometimes canceled because of snow. But because of your personal connection to the topic, this portmanteau will undoubtedly be able to support a strong essay.

Or maybe you are most content when knitting with your cat sleeping in your lap, and you decide to explore this feeling of comfort with the new portmanteau “knitten.” Or, to give an example of two more obviously related things, maybe apples and cinnamon is your all-time favorite flavor combination, so you decide it needs an official name, “applemon.”

In your actual response, your job is to follow the prompt, and explain why you see the two things you’re combining as a perfect match. As we’ve already touched on in the “Brainstorming” section above, your explanation should draw on your own personal experiences. UChicago admissions officers don’t want an academic essay on the chemical reactions that make apples and cinnamon such a satisfying flavor combination. 

Rather, they want to hear about how your life was changed the first time your grandma made you apple and cinnamon doughnuts, and how, since then, your mission in life has been to combine the two flavors in as many different forms as possible—not just baked goods, but also cider, jam, even stuffing for your family Thanksgiving turkey every year since 2018. 

With this kind of approach, your readers don’t just learn that you’re obsessed with these two flavors, but also that you’re creative, resourceful, and dedicated to tradition. The key isn’t to explain why these two things must be connected, but rather what you personally seeing this connection reflects about your personality as a whole.

If you’re having a hard time answering that question, take a step back from the actual portmanteau you’ve selected, and think of some of the qualities that make you who you are and aren’t already captured in your common app essay, or UChicago’s first supplement. Maybe it’s your sense of adventure. Maybe it’s your appreciation for melancholy things. Maybe it’s your love of animals. Whatever it is, see if you can use your portmanteau as a spotlight to shine light on this aspect of your personality.

There aren’t any major pitfalls you need to be on the lookout for with this prompt. One slightly subtler thing you ideally want to avoid is creating a portmanteau that reads clunkily. Notice that the real-life examples UChicago gives, and the ones we’ve generated, flow off the tongue. “Socsnow,” on the other hand, unlike “snoccer,” does not.

If you have two things you’re absolutely dying to combine, but can’t think of a sophisticated way to do it linguistically, that’s okay—it’s not a true emergency if the portmanteau reads a little awkwardly, so long as the essay itself is strong. But, since the whole point of the UChicago essays is to test just how creative you can be, ideally you’ll be able to come up with a word that sounds like something people would actually say.

Prompt 2, Option D

A jellyfish is not a fish. cat burglars don’t burgle cats. rhode island is not an island. write an essay about some other misnomer, and either come up with and defend a new name for it or explain why its inaccurate name should be kept. —inspired by sonia chang, class of 2025, and mirabella blair, class of 2027.

While you of course will still ultimately want to connect your misnomer to your own interests and personality, this is a prompt where using introspection to brainstorm may not make the most sense, as it’s possible that you just don’t have an obvious personal connection to anything that has been poorly named.

Instead, think more broadly about your life and the world around you—current events, pop culture, things your friends and family talk about a lot, and so on. Think deeply about the terms you hear thrown around on a daily basis, and if they actually make literal sense. Odds are, you’ll eventually stumble into a word or expression that doesn’t.

For an example you may have thought of before, the NFL season has just started, so maybe you decide to write your essay on the strangeness of calling American football “football” even  though feet are a relatively minor part of the game. For a more unusual example, maybe you notice a container of Gorilla Glue sitting on your counter after a home repair project, and realize that, as far as you know, gorillas are in no way involved in the making of Gorilla Glue.

As you can hopefully see from these examples, and from UChicago’s given above, there are more of these misnomers scattered throughout the language we use every day than you might originally think. That’s why we encourage you to brainstorm by just sitting and thinking about the words you hear often—there’s no need to open the dictionary. Hopefully, you’ll be surprised how many you think of on your own that just don’t make much sense.

While this should still be a personal, reflective essay, the structure may be more similar to your academic essays, since you’re going to be picking a stance (should the inaccurate name be kept or replaced) and defending it. So, like in an academic essay, you might start off by talking about why your misnomer doesn’t make sense, and then focus each of your paragraphs on a different reason why it should be kept or replaced.

However, unlike in an academic essay, the evidence you give for your position should be based on your own life experiences, not on research or a particular scholar’s position on the matter. You don’t want to explain that football players contact the ball with their foot on only 5% of plays, and so the name should be changed, nor do you want to dig up Gorilla Glue’s mission statement to justify why their name is actually a good one.

Rather, your goal is to use your position on this incredibly niche discussion to make broader points about who you are and how you see the world. To do that, you want to connect your ideas about this particular misnomer to formative moments and experiences from your own life.

For example, maybe you argue for the validity of the name Gorilla Glue by discussing your belief that the natural world is more powerful than any human achievement ever could be, a belief which you have developed as a result of numerous camping, backpacking, kayaking, and rock climbing trips throughout your youth.

Alternatively, you could argue against the name by talking about learning English as a second language, and how the challenging process of becoming bilingual taught you the importance of being precise with the words we use. You could then propose a new name, which may be less snappy, but is more literal: The Glue For When Every Other Fails.

If you do argue against replacing the inaccurate name, don’t be afraid to have some fun with your new idea, and even include some humor, along the lines of the suggestion above. Maybe you can also connect your new name to one of your personal experiences, like the time you and your brother accidentally broke a vase and only Gorilla Glue was able to help you stick it back together before your parents got home. If you wrap up your essay with a name that’s too literal, or present that name in a dry, unexciting way, the ending may fall a little flat compared to the rest of your essay.

UChicago already notes this in the prompt, but, along the same lines as a point we made with Option A, don’t write about one of the examples they give. The whole point of these prompts is showcasing your creativity, which you can’t do if you don’t even come up with your own topic.

On a separate note, you generally don’t want to get political in your discussion of the misnomer you pick. For example, maybe you’re inspired to write about how, in contemporary American politics, the term “Republican” does not align with what it used to mean in antiquity. That is a discussion worth having, but not in your college essay. While higher education does lean much further left than society as a whole, you have no way of knowing the political beliefs of your particular admissions officer. So, it’s best to avoid the risk of writing an essay that happens to go directly against one of their core beliefs.

Prompt 2, Option E

Despite their origins in the gupta empire of india or ancient egypt, games like chess or bowling remain widely enjoyed today. what modern game do you believe will withstand the test of time, and why —inspired by adam heiba, class of 2027.

The key to coming up with a strong topic is to define “game” broadly. Chess and bowling have almost nothing in common, other than the element of competition. So, while your mind may immediately go to something popular like football or basketball, we encourage you to spend a little more time brainstorming, to see if you can come up with something more creative.

As a quick aside, however, if a well-known game or sport is one of your true passions, then you should absolutely write your essay about it. If you’re part of six different fantasy football leagues and co-author a football blog with your older brother, don’t overthink this one. Ultimately, genuine passion and excitement is even more important than creativity, as the very best college essays are the ones that sparkle with the student’s enthusiasm.

If nothing immediately comes to mind, though, that’s okay! Refer back to our original advice, of thinking broadly. And, as always, try to think of games that you have some sort of personal connection to, to ensure your essay will be informative and engaging for UChicago admissions officers.

For example, maybe you think back on all the fond memories you have of spending hours playing Monopoly with your neighborhood friends. Or maybe you think about your family’s vacations to the beach every summer, and about cornhole’s consistent presence in the cool early mornings, hot afternoons, and calm evenings around a bonfire. 

Notice that, to repeat our first point, Monopoly and cornhole are completely different activities, so even if your initial reaction to this prompt is “I don’t like board games, though” or “I don’t like sports, though,” don’t rule it out as an option right off the bat (no pun intended).

One last word of advice, which you probably don’t even need at this point for UChicago’s prompts: don’t be afraid to think way outside the box. Maybe you’re one of the founding members of your local beach korfball team. UChicago admissions officers have probably never heard of korfball, which is like basketball but with no dribbling, no backboards, and fully co-ed teams. But they will assuredly love learning about the game, and why you think it will outlast others that are far more popular today.

As we just highlighted at the end of the previous section, remember that this prompt isn’t just “Write about a game.” Rather, your discussion of the game you choose needs to address the question of why you believe it will endure for thousands of years into the future, like chess and bowling. And, as always, although the question is somewhat academic in nature, your response should be grounded in your own personality and experiences, to show your reader what your opinion on this particular topic says about your potential as a UChicago student.

To illustrate the contrast between an “academic” response and the more personal tone you should be shooting for, compare these two potential approaches:

Approach 1: Explaining your belief in the enduring power of Monopoly by discussing how the game’s hundreds of different variations, focusing on everything from Star Wars to mountaineering, have allowed it to attain worldwide popularity and reliability.

Approach 2: Explaining how, although you haven’t played Monopoly with your neighborhood friends in years, the game played a big part in forming a strong foundation for your friendship, which lasts to this day, and you think it will continue to do the same for others far into the future.

Hopefully, the difference here is clear. The first one, while informative, doesn’t teach us anything about your own experiences, beliefs, or overall personality. The second one, on the other hand, shows that you are a loyal friend, have an appreciation for the universality of certain human experiences, and are somewhat nostalgic. Those tangible attributes will allow UChicago admissions officers to get a clear sense of how your values align with theirs, and how you would fit into their campus community more broadly.

Particularly if you fall into the category of someone who immediately has a game you truly love come to mind, make sure you stop for a second and ask yourself if you already wrote your common app essay about that topic. If the answer is yes, unfortunately you’ll need to pick a different game here, as the point of college essays is to teach admissions officers something that isn’t already captured elsewhere in your application. You’re already working with limited space, so don’t voluntarily limit yourself even further by repeating yourself.

Another word of caution is that, if you pick a highly unusual game like korfball, don’t spend too much time explaining the rules. You’re not a coach—you’re an applicant to UChicago. So, you don’t want to spend three paragraphs explaining niche penalties and strategies to avoid drawing them, as that won’t help UChicago admissions officers envision what you’d contribute to their campus community. 

Of course, you do have the freedom to be as creative as you want with your response. So, you could effectively structure your essay around the rules of korfball by, for example, focusing each paragraph on a different rule and connecting the idea behind that rule to an experience from your own life. Ultimately, the only thing that matters is that the essay doesn’t become all about korfball. Like with any college essay, regardless of your topic, ultimately this needs to be an essay about you .

Prompt 2, Option F

There are unwritten rules that everyone follows or has heard at least once in their life. but of course, some rules should be broken or updated. what is an unwritten rule that you wish didn’t exist (our custom is to have five new prompts each year, but this year we decided to break with tradition. enjoy) —inspired by maryam abdella, class of 2026.

This topic may initially seem a little trickier to brainstorm for, since UChicago doesn’t provide you with any concrete examples of the “unwritten rules” they’re talking about. But, along the same lines as much of our advice in the previous “Brainstorming” sections, if you take a step back and let your mind wander a little, you’ll likely find that you’re able to come up with plenty of unwritten rules you find annoying.

A good place to start is thinking back to your childhood. Was there something you often got yelled at for, but didn’t understand why? Maybe you used to put your elbows on the dinner table. Or you never entirely got why your mom was so insistent that your socks had to match.

You can also think about pet peeves you have today, of course. For example, maybe you hate the “driver picks the music” rule, because your music taste is different from everyone else’s in your friend group. Or you could write about a niche unwritten rules imposed by your parents, teachers, coaches, or friends. Maybe your parents insist that the dog eats after you do, but you always feel terrible watching her beg during meals. Or your lacrosse coach won’t let anyone drink Gatorade that’s not one of your school colors.

As you’re probably sick of hearing by now, you also want to make sure that you have a strong enough personal connection to this rule to write a pretty long essay about it. So, as you’re coming up with possibilities, ask yourself why you don’t like this rule. “Because I don’t” won’t make for a very exciting response. 

What will keep admissions officers engaged is a link between your dislike of this rule and your personality, interests, goals for college, and so on. So you’ll want to be sure that link is there before you decide on this prompt as the one you’re responding to.

As always, once you sit down to actually start writing, the key is to make your essay about the link between this unwritten rule and yourself, not about the unwritten rule itself. And, also like with the other prompts, you want to be creative in how you flesh out that link.

For example, in explaining your dislike of your coach’s Gatorade rule, maybe you talk about how your school colors are maroon and gold, but your favorite color is purple, and you love the color so much that it’s become a fundamental aspect of your personality, so it almost physically pains you that you can’t drink purple Gatorade. You could then talk about several of the purple things you love most, and why they’re important to you, like Taylor Swift’s Speak Now , which is your favorite album, the Baltimore Ravens, who are your favorite football team, and Ursula, who is your favorite Disney villain.

Alternatively, you could talk about some of the conversations you’ve had with strangers after they notice your mismatched socks, and how to you, that shows that, while unwritten rules are supposed to enforce some order in a chaotic world, the real foundation of life-human connection—can only be found outside those rules.

Hopefully, these two examples help illustrate that you don’t have to take a “serious” approach to this prompt. As we noted in our breakdown of Option B, writing a more lighthearted response can feel risky, but in reality breaking up the overall formality of your application can be a great way to set yourself apart from other applicants who have taken a more conventional approach. 

That being said, if you’re not confident you’ll be able to make it work, don’t stress. The most important thing with any college essay is that it authentically reflects who you are, and that won’t happen if you’re forcing anything or overextending yourself. Our only point is that, if you do instinctively see an unusual path leading from this prompt, don’t be afraid to take it 🙂

Keep in mind that a college essay is not the same thing as a lunchtime conversation with your friends. So, make sure that, in discussing why this particular unwritten rule irritates you, you don’t accidentally rub someone who doesn’t know you the wrong way.

For example, maybe you think it’s silly that the chef is supposed to serve themselves last, even though they’re the one who cooked the food. This position has merit—you’d likely find plenty of people on the street who agree with you. But if you frame your response around the belief that you should be the first one to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you may come across as callous or even selfish.

Instead, try to structure your opinion around positive traits, ones that UChicago admissions officers will be looking for in their incoming freshman class. For example, you could talk about how you don’t like this unwritten rule because it sets the chef apart from everyone else, which goes against your belief that food and mealtimes should be a place for people to be equal and connect. So, maybe the chef shouldn’t necessarily be served first, but being served last all the time feels counterproductive.

Prompt 2, Option G

And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option in the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). be original, creative, thought provoking. draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the university of chicago; take a little risk, and have fun.

Again, this prompt is, on the surface, granting you a lot of leeway. UChicago even ends it with an exclamation point! But you should always remember: they expect a disciplined, thorough, rigorous essay. Don’t let your sense of fun and frolic drown out your serious intellectual ideas.

Pick a prompt that inspires you to write, and connects with your academic interests. If a prompt jumps out at you, and you’re immediately filled with ideas, it’s probably a good fit. Just take it slowly, jot your thoughts down, and get to work. 

Involve your personal connection to that prompt. If you’re not answering any of the 6 prompts UChicago has issued this year, the onus is on you to prove that you and the archival prompt you’ve picked are a match made in heaven. This means having a lot of knowledge and personal investment in your subject matter, and an angle/perspective totally unique to you. 

If making your own question, remember this: YOUR QUESTION IS YOUR HOOK. So make sure it’s not a question that could be found on a standard-issue application, like “When did I overcome a challenge?” or “What’s a place that feels like home?” These prompts are everywhere. They won’t get the job done, and they won’t make an unforgettable first impression. But “Why did I lock myself in the basement and watch The Bee Movie for eighteen hours?” That’s a different story. 

If you look at past UChicago prompts, they tend to be fond of certain things: numbered lists, fairy tales, common phrases, and items of pop culture that can be re-contextualized. They also like hearing your answers to famous questions, and you might have a unique answer to “Et tu, Brute?” or “Do you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain?” Just remember that the novelty of the question, while the hook of your essay, is not its substance. If your biography and scholarly interests don’t involve pina coladas, or rain, you might just have to pick a different question to answer – as wonderful as that eternal question is.

UChicago essays take a lot of time and thought—but don’t overthink it. The university wants to hear what you have to say, in its full form. That’s why they give you a page limit, and not a word limit—no last minute cutting! Fully develop your ideas in a way that feels natural. If a paragraph needs to be a little thicker, or if you need to include a longer quote from your favorite author, don’t worry about it. These essays can be fun to write and extremely effective.

You can look up lots of examples of essays online, but try not to get intimidated. It’s the nature of the UChicago essays to encourage everyone to showcase their expertise—which is exactly what you should try to do! You may read sample essays and think, “Wow. I’ve never spent a month in Arizona digging up fossils. How can I ever compete?” Try to reframe the essays as a Giant Celebration of everyone’s achievements and interests not a Competition.

If you’ve written your UChicago essay and are looking for feedback, you might want to check out our free peer essay review and paid expert essay review . Since the UChicago essay prompts are weird, it’s important to get an extra set of eyes on them to make sure they are clear and engaging! You can also improve your own writing skills by editing other students’ essays.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

I took a job in New Zealand after my life turned upside down. I love it here, but the pay isn't sustainable.

• Camille Fahrnbauer went from travel nursing in the US to New Zealand for a fresh start.
• She found the work culture in New Zealand to be more supportive and less exhausting.
• Despite better work-life balance, lower pay and missing family will bring her back to the US.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Camille Fahrnbauer, a 26-year-old travel nurse from Georgia currently working in New Zealand. It's been edited for length and clarity.

Travel nursing in the US was debilitating. I needed multiple days to recover from the exhaustion of a single shift. So when my husband left me unexpectedly and my life flipped upside down, I took a nursing job in New Zealand .

I was shocked at how different the work culture was. We're adequately staffed, I'm given multiple breaks, and I finally have the energy to care for my patients. My work-life balance is restored and I feel like me again.

Still, I won't be staying.

For a fresh start, I signed a year-long nursing contract in New Zealand

I'd been travel nursing across the West Coast for three years when I started feeling a pull to nurse abroad. I knew I wouldn't be 26 forever and wanted to travel while I could, but the complex process of relocating with my husband and his job was enough of a barrier to keep me put.

Related stories

Then my husband filed for a divorce without warning, my dog died, and I crushed my ankle in a freak hiking accident, all within a month. I knew I needed a fresh start.

I spent the next six weeks resting my ankle and scouring the internet for international nursing programs. I was limited to English-speaking countries and remembered a fantastic family vacation to New Zealand several years back. I figured it'd be the perfect place to return to. I found a year-long nursing contract in Auckland with great reviews and started the weeks-long documentation process.

I found a flat on Facebook Marketplace that had an open room. It was a huge risk, as I'd be living with five random roommates, but the price was too good to pass up.

Once I finished the application process, I booked a one-way ticket to Auckland. To my surprise after I arrived, the flat I rented was perfectly functional, my roommates were stellar, and I felt settled. I bought a used truck online and started working shortly after.

I've been here about three months, and my nursing lifestyle is already completely different.

My 12-hour shifts are no longer unbearable

In the US, we were just about as short-staffed as we were short on equipment, so every day was absolute chaos. I'd be lucky to escape for a five-minute snack or bathroom break during my 12-hour shift in the ICU. It was an unwritten rule that you didn't take breaks.

I was overworked , exhausted, and functioning on auto-pilot. I didn't have the capacity to give my full attention to two to four patients at once.

There was also a distinct hierarchy . I'd call doctors by their earned titles and knew better than to bother them with my concerns. Everyone was working tirelessly, so we handled most problems on our own.

Meanwhile, at my hospital in New Zealand, the doctors insist on being called by their first names. Everyone treats each other as equals, which makes me feel safe to ask questions and voice my concerns.

I can't speak for all of New Zealand, but at my particular hospital, we're allotted three 30-minute breaks in each 12-hour shift. We give a stand-by nurse a comprehensive patient report and rest easy knowing that our patient is being cared for while we're on break. Our break room is stocked with tea, bread, and cheese, plus comfortable couches to lounge on. My breaks are rejuvenating and prepare me to return to my shift with focus and precision.

I have a life outside of work, but the pay is lower and I miss my family

At the end of a shift in the States, I'd drive home in silence. It felt like I needed three days of doing nothing to feel like myself again. I hardly had enough physical and mental energy to get out of bed until it was time to clock back in.

A good night's rest is all I need to recover from a shift in New Zealand. The next morning, I'm up early to hike, surf, or take a day trip to explore. I feel like I finally have my life back.

Though I'm happier and healthier than ever, the pay isn't great

I make between one-half to two-thirds of what I did in the US. The financial situation is manageable because I'm single, living with several flatmates, and not looking to make any substantial purchases. I'm still able to explore and travel without budgeting too much. But living on this salary would be difficult in the long term. I also miss my family and friends and know that I'd be unhappy if I couldn't return to my loved ones.

After my contract ends in April 2025, I plan on nursing abroad for a few more years to explore the world and gain experience. Dubai is at the top of my list because it's reported to have a great work-life balance and solid pay.

Ultimately, I'm going back to the States where my family lives. I know it'll be hard to return after being so spoiled, so I plan on returning to school to narrow my focus and open up opportunities for higher-paying work. I'm willing to sacrifice workplace conditions if it means I can achieve the security of a US nursing paycheck and be with my loved ones.

If you have moved abroad for work and would like to share your story, please email Tess Martinelli at [email protected]

• Main content

• Grand Rapids/Muskegon
• Saginaw/Bay City
• All Michigan

Ann Arbor alley tagger is ‘breaking one of the biggest unwritten street rules,’ artist says

• Published: Jul. 30, 2024, 11:03 a.m.

More "Farts" in Ann Arbor's Graffiti Alley on July 27, 2024. (Ryan Stanton | MLive.com) Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

• Ryan Stanton | [email protected]

ANN ARBOR, MI — Gary Horton’s artwork can be found in a number of places in the Ann Arbor area.

The Ypsilanti-based muralist and graffiti artist has colorful, action-packed murals that pop on the sides of downtown buildings and large paintings on display inside the Michigan Theater.

But one place you might not find him doing artwork again soon is Ann Arbor’s Graffiti Alley, which has been repeatedly tagged with the word “Farts” hundreds of times in the last year.

“Personally, I don’t find it amusing,” Horton said of the phenomenon that’s sparking controversy. “I’m all for artistic freedom and expression, but this feels like disrespect. This trend is discouraging for serious artists and will likely keep me from using this space for my art in the near future.”

While painting amid the COVID-19 pandemic in summer 2020, Gary Horton shows the design for his mural off First Street in downtown Ann Arbor, titled "Not afraid to dance." (Ryan Stanton | MLive.com) Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

As an artist who has done work in the alley, Horton said he thinks the repeated “Farts” graffiti is breaking one of the biggest unwritten street rules: If you can’t burn it, don’t touch it.

“This means that if your artwork isn’t going to be as good as what’s already there, you should find another space,” he said.

Or if the artwork has been up for a while, also known as “running,” it’s different and it might be time for a refresh, he said, noting Graffiti Alley is known for being a free-for-all space for artistic expression, with high turnover due to limited space.

There used to be more elaborate and creative artwork in the alley, including pieces done by skilled graffiti artists like BAKA , before “Farts” took over in the summer of 2023 and began repeatedly covering over other artwork.

Some of the graffiti art that graced Ann Arbor's Graffiti Alley on May 23, 2023, before it was taken over by "Farts." (Ryan Stanton | MLive.com) Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

“Farts” and profanity-laden messages calling out “Farts” for messing with the alley are now the norm. Who’s behind “Farts” remains somewhat of a mystery, but those who’ve met him say he’s a local, middle-aged dad named Ryan.

Horton said he had the chance to speak with various other artists recently while working on a project in the alley — not painting the walls, but stretching oversized canvases.

Some artists who traveled from other cities to use the alley as a legal space for practice were upset about the “Farts” situation and some were retaliating, he said. On the other hand, he heard tourists who thought it was funny and liked it.

“Art is subjective and I love that part of the game,” he said.

A mural by Gary Horton in an alley off Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor on July 17, 2024. (Ryan Stanton | MLive.com) Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Next door to Graffiti Alley, hanging above the grand staircase inside the Michigan Theater, Horton currently has three large paintings in vivid colors on exhibit, titled “Dreams in Blue,” “You Look Lonely” and “The Weight of Power.”

One features a young jazz singer at the moment where dreams begin to take shape, another focuses on introspection and depicts someone gazing at a giant hologram while grappling with what it means to be human, while another shows a skull and crown being hoisted by two hands, evoking Shakespearean themes of mortality, power and legacy.

Paintings by local artist Gary Horton on display inside the Michigan Theater in downtown Ann Arbor on July 11, 2024. (Ryan Stanton | MLive.com) Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

In the artist’s statement, Horton said his artistic journey has been shaped by a diverse background in graffiti, graphic design, cartooning and realistic portrait painting and his work is a celebration of the interplay between different styles, creating a harmonious and visually striking experience for the viewer.

What “Farts” is creating in Graffiti Alley is in the eye of the beholder. Some consider it art, but some say it stinks.

5 great places to check out public and street art in Ann Arbor

Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the  local Ann Arbor news page  or sign up for the free “ 3@3 Ann Arbor ” daily newsletter.

Stories by Ryan Stanton

• Earhart Road closing in Ann Arbor for DTE gas pipeline installation
• Your guide to the August 2024 primary election in Washtenaw County
• Tiny home residents outside Ann Arbor ordered to clear out
• Early voting begins in Washtenaw County for Aug. 6 primary, find out where to vote
• ‘An Ann Arbor original.’ Local historian Ray Detter remembered for big spirit

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.