Could a formal spec act as a constitution for a blockchain? Or should it be a yellow paper? Whatever form it takes it will have to take a form which everyone can understand and not only high priests. Countries have a constitution written in a way where only high judges can interpret it. In the United States we have a constitution which can only be interpreted by the Supreme Court and it's ultimately requires trusting a group of people who act as high priests.

The same could be said about scripture where only certain people are in the high priest position to decipher the true meaning of the scripture. This could lead to problems in the future if the community disagrees with the interpretation of the high priests. And formal specifications as they are currently are not done in a language we all understand.

The good news is technology is improving. There is a technology now called controlled natural language, which allows for Controlled English. A formal specification written in Controlled English would be readable by anyone who can speak English.

We have to avoid legalese because that opens us up to the same "obfuscated code is law" as we have currently with Ethereum smart contracts. Everyone has to act as the distributed high priest and if necessary vote up and down or reach consensus line by line on every block of controlled nature language which doesn't just have to be English but can be in every language and dynamically translated for all participants into their native language.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_natural_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempto_Controlled_English
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_specification