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Checks and balances, and legal certainty in either direction.

Legal certainty? It was supposed to be the answer to the problems for the War Measures Act; the Constitution of Transitional Measures Act; the Emergency Powers Act; the Public Order (Temporary Measures) Act and some others I have forgotten.

I would argue that laws only mean what they are interpreted to mean by a particular governmental body at a particular time.

And you can in addition have a coherent, clear and easily interpretable body of laws and measures which result in a society which lacks many of the features of what people like to imagine is a "democracy".

There's still a level of certainty that comes from "this law survived legal review by the courts" that I find some value in.

Fair enough. It's better than nothing, but probably not good enough. We'll be seeing more of this sort of problem as living standards decline under climate destruction and the buffers separating us from more direct conflict of interest thin out.

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