Rights in Search of Protection

In Where Our Protection Lies, Dimitrios Kyritsis develops an innovative constitutional framework that aims to reconcile two commitments: democratic governance and the protection of fundamental rights. This review article argues that the reconciliation fails to provide fundamental rights with meaningful protection. On the one hand, the framework’s moral resources hollow out the duties that rights impose on legislatures. Instead of protecting persons from the abusive exercise of legislative power, the framework narrows what constitutes abuse. On the other, the framework’s institutional resources leave persons without the means of vindicating their rights. What Kyritsis terms protection consists in the ongoing susceptibility to the violation of one’s fundamental rights.