Constitutional protections of rights
Jon Roland
2003 Jan 29

The design of a constitution to protect rights must enable those 
individuals or minorities most likely to be unfairly oppressed by a 
majority to assemble supporting coalitions sufficient to block or 
reverse government action, without disabling government from performing 
those functions that are essential, especially for defense and to 
deliver justice in the courts. Some of the traditional ways to do that 
are:

1 - Requirement for supermajority votes on some issues, such as 
constitutional amendments, raising taxes, declaring war, conviction of 
one criminally accused (unanimous jury verdict).

2 - Division of powers into different departments selected in ways that 
represent different constituencies differently, such as one house of a 
legislature based on population and the other on equal representation of 
geographic units with unequal populations.

3. Constitutional substantive prohibitions on violations of certain 
specified rights, no matter how great the popular support for doing so 
might be.

4. Procedural constraints, such as due process, requirements to 
deliberate for a certain period of time, delays in taking votes, etc., 
to give excited majorities time to cool off and think about it.

5. Severe constraints on the powers delegated to government and to 
particular officials, and to funding for them, so they have less of a 
tendency toward abuse and corruption.

6. Oversight functions, such as petition hearings, legislative hearings, 
ombudsmen, inspectors general, or bureaus set up to investigate and 
perhaps prosecute misconduct on one another, with safeguards against 
collusion or undue influence. This would include the power of judges to 
declare official acts unconstitutional and void.

7. Enablement of corrective actions by private citizens, such as citizen 
arrests and prosecutions, access to grand juries, grand jury 
investigations, ballot initiative and referendum, open public meetings 
and records, access to publication outlets, and maintainance of a well-
armed, trained, and organized militia than can operate independently of 
government supervision.

8. Basic privacy protections to prevent undue public or private pressure 
on petitioners or dissidents.

9. A robust network of independent private associations of all kinds 
that can easily become the focus of protest and reform, and enable 
victims of abuse or witnesses to corruption to form blocking or 
reversing coalitions.

10. A high level of civic education and encouragement of civic 
participation by all citizens, starting from an early age, so that it 
becomes a habit, and civic skills are highly developed.