I don't think that it is sensible, even jokingly, to equate "custom" (essentially, the good will and good faith of politically-elected representatives) to a legally supreme document that is enforceable by a branch of government comprised of highly-educated individuals not subject to removal for politically unpopular decisions. I certainly feel that my rights are safer within the latter system.Lord_Morningstar wrote:What, other than the Bill of Rights, protects the rights of those not in the majority in the United States?axordil wrote:So what, other than custom, protects the rights of those not in the majority?
In all honesty, I’m not convinced that a codified bill of rights is a better guarantor of rights than common law and parliamentary democracy. The U.S. bill of rights did nothing to stop slavery, native dispossession and segregation for example, almost certainly the three biggest human rights abuses in American history.
What is true, as you implicitly point out, is that a codified bill of rights within a judicial supremacy-embracing state is only as good as the branch of government charged with enforcing it. And indeed, the American judiciary has had some prominent historic failures, particularly around racial and gender equality. Perhaps we can say this: a judiciary that contains no, or few, minorities is more likely to fail at protecting minority rights than a diverse, representative judiciary. The fact that a judiciary in the former mold failed at times in its constitutional mandate does not mean that the same will hold true of a diverse, representative, but not politically accountable judiciary. I believe that the latter iteration of the judiciary will prove much more protective of the constitutional rights of minorities over time, and I think that the resulting form of judicial supremacy will prove to be constitutionally preferable to parliamentary sovereignty.