Rights and wrongs

Abstract

Among the many interests of Beat Blankart is Constitutional Political Economy. A few years ago we published an article setting out possible constitutional reforms that would improve the workings of the democratic process in Germany and perhaps other countries (Blankart and Mueller, 2002). This was followed up by a conference on the draft constitution for the European Union (Blankart and Mueller, 2004). My contribution to the conference was an essay critiquing the list of rights included in the draft constitution. My contribution to this Festschrift honoring Beat returns to the theme of constitutional rights. After first sketching the logic underlying the justification for delineating rights in a constitution, I illustrate some of their properties by discussing recent examples of the use and misuse of the rights concept. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.