The Abuse of Constitutional Rights

Abstract

This chapter shows how constitutional rights, which have become a nearly universal hallmark of liberal democratic constitutionalism, can be abused for anti-democratic ends. It offers a series of examples, running across different forms of rights and contexts. It shows how hate speech and ‘memory’ laws have been abused in Rwanda, Poland, and Russia, how voting rights were turned to authoritarian ends in Hungary and Fiji, how gender quotas advanced anti-democratic agendas in Rwanda, and how a sham commitment to environmental rights helped to shore up support for an authoritarian agenda in Ecuador. Examples of the abuse of constitutional rights in fact show up in many other chapters of this book, reflecting the centrality of modern rights discourse to liberal democracy.