Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Social Contracts: Our Civic Foundation
Dr. Phillip Muñoz explores the concept of social contracts and explains how they formed the foundation of American governance. He illustrates how these agreements transform potential chaos into ordered liberty, allowing diverse individuals to live together peacefully and prosperously.
• Social contracts/compacts address how we form political communities when we are all equal by nature
• Unlike families where authority is natural, political communities must establish governance through mutual agreement
• American revolutionaries needed a new framework for self-governance after rejecting British rule
• Social contracts provide security, law, and justice that cannot exist in a "state of nature"
• Without established legal systems, even simple transactions would require force rather than peaceful resolution
• Everyday examples like traffic rules and school drop-offs demonstrate social contracts in action
• While we form communities "for mere life," their ultimate purpose is enabling "the good life"
• Good government facilitates coordination among thousands of people engaged in potentially dangerous activities
• The founders built America on the principle that legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed
Learn more about the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at Notre Dame.
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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Welcome back everyone. I am very excited we have a new scholar. So today we are joined by Dr Philip Munoz, the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and concurrent professor of law at the University of Notre Dame go Irish, where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. Dr Munoz, thank you so much for being here. Our question today is what?
Speaker 2:is the idea of a social contract and how did it influence our founders? Well, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Yeah, so the idea of a social contract, or what the founders might say the social compact, gets at the idea of how do we form a political community. You could say, look, the family is natural, right. Man and woman come together and they form a family and there's natural authority. The parents have authority over the children and parents have a duty to raise the children and the children have a duty to obey the parents. And that's all generated by nature.
Speaker 2:But when you take lots of different families and people who are unrelated and we form together to make a political community, who gets to govern? If we're all equal you know, all human beings are created equal well, who gets to rule? And the idea of the social contract or the social compact is well, we agree as equals to come together into a political community. We write a constitution for ourselves and we set up a system of government including rules for how we select our government officials. And that idea of coming together as a political community, of creating a constitution, is the social compact. And then the question is well what makes for a legitimate social compact. So that's the underlying idea. These ideas are present in our founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 1:What would make someone want to enter into a social compact? Because you know we've talked about on the podcast the state of nature and I'm thinking, like you know, if I'm a student, right, like what is the benefit of me entering into a social compact in my classroom or anything like that?
Speaker 2:Well, the social compact, at least in the context we're talking about, is a political arrangement. So take the revolutionaries in 1776. They're overthrowing a government you know they were colonists, right, and the King of England was the, the ultimate authority in Parliament. And they're subject to the King. And they said, look, this government is unjust, we want to govern ourselves and we're going to declare revolution and throw off a tyrannical ruler and a tyrannical system of government. Okay, well, once we do that, well, how do we form together? So, once you overthrow the king, well, who gets to rule? What are?
Speaker 2:And the reasons we, you want to form a social compact are because, well, we, we need a system of law. Also, it's a system of anarchy. That's the state of nature. The state of nature is just the idea that there's no authority, and a situation in which there's no authority is an insecure situation, it's a dangerous situation. And so we form the social compact, first and foremost so we can have a system of law to protect our lives and property and have security, but also because you need a political community for human flourishing right, for the arts, for universities, for commerce. So Aristotle says and this is true of the founders that you form a community, a political community, for mere life, but the purpose or goal of the community is the good life Right.
Speaker 1:So is it fair to say that you know, within these social compacts or contracts is the ultimate freedom. So in a state of nature you're not really free because you're insecure, you don't have kind of those protections that you said you know, that are listed. We've talked about in our declaration life liberty, pursuit of happiness or life, liberty and property that without a social contract there's no actual freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, just think about when you want to enter into an agreement. Right, you know, I have candy bars and you have a book, and I'll trade you three candy bars for your one book. But I don't have the candy bars. So you give me the book and I said I'll give you the candy bars tomorrow. Well, what happens if I don't give you the candy bars? Well, you, you know, complain to me and say, hey, you owe me candy bars. You took the book. And what if I don't do it?
Speaker 2:Well, if there's no system of government, you have to come, you know, clobber me over the head. You have to come, you know, clobber me over the head. But if there's a system of government, you can say look, I'm going to hire a lawyer and we're going to adjudicate this dispute through the law. Now, of course, I should just give you the candy bars, as I promised. But sometimes disputes arise and a system of law is a way we live together harmoniously and peacefully, both to adjudicate disputes, like a contract dispute, but also, if I steal your book, and a system of punishment. So we need law to live together justly. Justice is the ultimate aim of law, and it's not only that. We want to live. We want to live under rules of justice, and a good system of law facilitates rules of justice, it allows for prosperity, it allows for religious freedom, it allows people with diverse interests to live together, as I say, well and according to principles of justice. So all of all of we want to be in a social compact so we can live well.
Speaker 1:So I do have a couple questions. So we're using social contract and compact interchangeably, correct? So you can say either one and then for our listeners that might not know what the word adjudicate means, could you help us out with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just how do we need a judge, adjudicates right, a way to settle disputes, even just simple things. Take very elementary things. Maybe you drove to school this morning. Think about all the order it takes to coordinate a thousand cars on the road at the same time. It's a very simple thing. We're so used to it.
Speaker 2:If you go to a country where there's no rules of the road, it's total chaos. But the fact that the light turns red, people stop. They take their turn. When the light goes green, they go. Hopefully they don't drive too fast, they drive. All that coordination, not to mention someone to build the roads and maintain the roads, all the things we take for granted. We need a system of law and government to help secure being able to travel, to see our friends go to school, have jobs, and that coordination. It's actually extremely complicated to coordinate thousands and thousands of people on something which is dangerous. Driving a car is dangerous. If you get hit by a car, it's very dangerous and it's just an everyday thing we all experience. But the level of coordination and sophistication, that's, in part, what a good government can do.
Speaker 1:I love that you brought that up, because I'm thinking about dropping my daughter off at school and she's at a high school and there are a ton of cars. However, as a citizen of the, internally agree to drive the speed limit, to obey traffic signs, because if not, like I mean, I get frustrated with school drop-off because there's so many people. But when you put it that way, it's like we, all of these parents and all of these adults, are agreeing to these rules of the road. You know where to drop your students off, but if we didn't, it would be chaos and if we didn't, there could be a lot of harm. You know, because if people are driving 100 miles an hour in a school zone, that's a problem.
Speaker 2:Just imagine when you get picked up from school or you do the school drop off. Imagine if all these kids are being dropped off or picked up from school at the same time and no one has set up the rules. By how you do it, you'd have all these parents arriving at the same time in every different direction and trying to find their kids and it would be total chaos. I refused actually to pick up my kids because I can't stand being in the drop off line and waiting. But as much as the drop off line is painful, imagine if there was no line and you just showed up and parked somewhere and had to find your kids right, and then you'd have kids walking around looking for their parents and people driving every which way and it'd be very dangerous. So that coordination Now we can do it voluntarily. Schools by themselves, but now think of not just a school but a whole city, a whole country.
Speaker 1:That's where you need a system of law. Dr Munoz, thank you so much. I really appreciated your examples today because I think that, no matter who our listener is, they can understand the impact of a social compact and the influences it's had on our founders. So I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
