Letters to Lily by Alan MacFarlane

Author:Alan MacFarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2009-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Should our rights and freedoms be enshrined in writing?

People have suggested that we would be better protected against our rulers and the tyranny of the majority through a written constitution. Certainly the American Constitution was a noble document, guaranteeing individual liberties and freedom of conscience. But it has worked because the principles it enshrined were very vague and general truisms, a statement of the obvious ideas transferred from the unwritten British political system. It could be, and has been, interpreted in entirely different ways by different people.

Written constitutions, in themselves, are no guarantee of liberty. The French, Italians and Germans have had many written constitutions over the last two hundred years but these have not protected them against tyranny. Attempts to introduce a European Constitution are causing considerable alarm since there is a feeling that it is too open-ended, too easily amendable, too undermining of subsidiary powers, hazy about the level of responsibilities. The new order will soon be overburdened by trying to specify too much. By its silences and omissions it may destroy rather than increase liberty.

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