The article explores the claim that representative legislatures should create general legal norms. After distinguishing the requirement that statutes be general from the broader rule-of-law idea that law be general, I concentrate on the French constitutional tradition to argue that the plausibility of the claim turns on the elucidation of a set of social norms and understandings about the proper role of representative legislatures mediating between abstract ideals of the common good and local practices. I call these norms grammars. The article then briefly compares the French ‘Sieyesian’ grammar of political representation with the US ‘Madisonian’ one regarding the issue of generality of statutes and concludes with a plea for deeper comparative investigation into different such grammars.

中文翻译：

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代议制立法机构，政治代表文法和法规普遍性

本文探讨了代议制立法机构应制定一般法律规范的主张。在将法令具有普遍性的要求与广泛的法治概念（即法律具有普遍性）区别开来之后，我将重点放在法国宪法传统上，指出主张的合理性取决于对一系列社会规范和对法律的理解。代表立法机关在共同利益的抽象理想与地方实践之间进行调解的适当作用。我称这些规范为语法。然后，文章就法令的一般性问题简要地比较了法国的“西耶斯式”政治代表语法与美国的“麦迪逊式”语法，并得出结论，希望对不同的此类语法进行更深入的比较研究。