Rules for constitutional hardball

Political actors can and do use tactics that are legal but norm‑breaking; deciding which tactics are acceptable requires a small, civic‑facing checklist: be principled (grounded in constitutional purpose), stabilize rather than escalate the system, and be defensible to voters. Silver proposes treating a proposed aggressive reform against these three tests before pursuing it, to avoid costly reciprocal escalations. — A short, practical rubric for judging 'legal but norm‑breaking' tactics could change how parties and policymakers justify controversial institutional moves and reduce escalation dynamics across the system.