Schauer F
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
J Med Philos. 1992 Dec;17(6):573-87. doi: 10.1093/jmp/17.6.573.
Using the right to die and the United States Supreme Court case of Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health as exemplars, this article explores the notion of third-order decisionmaking. If first order decisionmaking is about what should happen, and second-order decisionmaking is about who should decide what should happen, then third-order decisionmaking is about who should decide who decides. This turns out to be an apt characterization of constitutionalism, which is centrally concerned with the allocation of responsibility for making decisions about the allocation of responsibility. Deference to erroneous second-order decisions, as in the Cruzan case itself, may merely be an example of this central feature of constitutionalism.
以死亡权以及美国最高法院关于“克鲁赞诉密苏里州卫生部主任案”为例，本文探讨三阶决策的概念。如果一阶决策关乎应该发生什么，二阶决策关乎谁应该决定应该发生什么，那么三阶决策则关乎谁应该决定谁来做决定。事实证明，这恰是对宪政的一种描述，宪政主要关注的是关于责任分配的决策权的分配。正如在克鲁赞案本身中那样，对错误的二阶决策的尊重，可能仅仅是宪政这一核心特征的一个例子。
