The expansion of constitutional rights has become a rhetorical tool for populist governments, when they do nothing to address much more vital questions like wealth inequality and social injustice. Latin America offers sharp examples, past and present.
Stephen Sedley · Cloudy Horizon: Constitutional Business · LRB 13 April 2023 lrb.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lrb.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Pierre Trudeau enacted his rationalist Constitution just as the corrosive logic of liberalism was fracturing our society. Its legacy is a post-rational, post-liberal system where the most important issues are subject to the whims of judicial power.
Pierre Trudeau’s constitutional reforms went right for the pre-Enlightenment heart, injecting the adrenaline of the American and French revolutions into our sleepy constitutional compromise. For the first time in a Westminster parliamentary system, the principles of government were written down and the abstract notion of universal rights was elevated above the sovereignty of parliament.