第3页

宪法不仅仅是某种可接受的或者合法的过去的法典编纂形式。它只继受了过去可接受的部分，同时也代表着跟过去不可接受的部分的决裂。对于所有年龄、阶层、肤色的人来说，它是……跟受宪法保护的开放、民主及普遍人权的文化的彻底决裂。对未来的渴望是建立在一个基于自由和平等的开放、民主的社会中的合理东西。前提是有一个合理、透明的法律文化。因此，对宪法有关规定的解释必须能够对制定宪法的目的的产生影响。

Society and governments do much better if they allow a diversity of opinion. No one knows everything. If governments want to make wise policies, they should listen to a wide range of people. A special danger is that if people only to whose agree with them, they will go to extremes. Diversity views can be a healthy check on unjustified extremism.

What is the relationship among countries, democracy, and rights? The most important answer is that democracy cannot exist without rights. If people cannot speak freely, democracy cannot exist. In addition, human beings should be free from torture and police abuse, simply because they are human. From these points, we can identify a set of minimal rights for citizens in a constitutional democracy.

1.	Protection of political dissent. The central democratic right is the right to engage in political dissent. This means that government cannot punish people simply because they have criticized the government.
2.	Protection against police abuse. A principal goal of democratic constitution is to ensure that the police do not abuse their authority. This is especially important in light of the massive force that police officers have at their disposal, including the power to shoot people or to lock people up. Protection against police abuse is central to democratic self-government.
3.	The rule of law. It is easy to describe the minimal content of the rule of law:
a.	Clear, general, publicly accessible rules of criminal law laid down in advance. The rule of law requires rules of criminal law that have a degree of clarity, in the sense that people need not guess about their meaning, and also generality, in the sense that they apply to classes rather than particular people or groups. Laws should be publicly accessible as well as clear and general. It follows that there is a ban “secret law”. Vague laws—banning, for example, “excessive” or “unreasonable” behavior—are unacceptable in the criminal context; they are akin to secret law in the sense that people are unlikely to know what they entail.
b.	Official conformity to law; relationship between law on the books and law in the world. If law does not operate in the books as it does in the world, the rule of law and real law, the rule of law is compromised. If there is little or no resemblance between enacted law and real law, the rule of law cannot exist.
c.	Hearing rights and availability of review by independent judges. The rule of law requires a right to a hearing in which people can contest the government’s claim that they should be punished under the law. Someone who is alleged to have committed a crime is entitled to some forum in which he can claim that he has not violated the law. Ordinarily the purpose of the hearing is to ensure that the facts have been accurately found. There should also be some form of review by independent officials, usually judges entitled to a degree of independence from political pressures.
4.	No torture, murder, or physical abuse by government. A minimal requirement of a democratic constitution is that officials may not murder people, torture them, or otherwise engage in physical abuse. Thus constitutions include a ban on official terrorism.
5.	Protection against slavery and discrimination on the basis of race or sex. What is the minimal content of a democratic constitution’s equality principle? At a minimum, slavery is banned, and the government cannot use law to discriminate against people because of their race or gender. Government may not segregate people because of their race, or impose burdens selectively on people of a certain race, or prevent women, because they are women, from receiving either employment or education.
6.	Religious liberty. Democratic constitutions do not allow people to be punished because of their religious beliefs. In free societies, government cannot harm people who are Christians or Hindus or Jews or Buddhists. Religious beliefs cannot be targeted as such.
7.	The right to vote. People are entitled to select their leaders. Under democratic constitutions, many of the most important officials must be chose by the public. The right to vote protects important interests. If leaders must be approved by the public, they are most unlikely to ignore the risk of mass starvation. And if leaders must be approved by the public, leaders are more likely to act in ways that help the public.

Of course nations differ. There is no single constitution for all societies. But human beings are human everywhere, and at least some of the rights I have describe do seem to belong to every human being on the face of the earth.