Does constitutionalizing rights improve respect for those rights in practice? Drawing on statistical analyses, survey experiments, and case studies from around the world, Mila Versteeg, Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, argues that enforcing constitutional rights is not easy, but that some rights are harder to repress than others. First, enshrining rights in constitutions does not automatically ensure that those rights will be respected. For rights to matter, rights violations need to be politically costly. But this is difficult to accomplish for unconnected groups of citizens. Second, some rights are easier to enforce than others, especially those with natural constituencies that can mobilize for their enforcement. This is the case for rights that are practiced by and within organizations, such as the rights to religious freedom, to unionize, and to form political parties. Because religious groups, trade unions and parties are highly organized, they are well-equipped to use the constitution to resist rights violations. As a result, these rights are systematically associated with better practices. By contrast, rights that are practiced on an individual basis, such as free speech or the prohibition of torture, often lack natural constituencies to enforce them, which makes it easier for governments to violate these rights. Third, even highly organized groups armed with the constitution may not be able to stop governments dedicated to rights-repression. When constitutional rights are enforced by dedicated organizations, they are thus best understood as speed bumps that slow down attempts at repression.
About the speaker:
Mila Versteeg joined the Law School in 2011. Her research and teaching interests include comparative constitutional law, public international law and empirical legal studies. She has published over 70 articles and book chapters, in both legal and social science journals. Her publications have, amongst others, appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Law and Economics, the American Journal of International Law, and the Journal of Law, Economics and Organizations. A number of her works have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and Turkish. Her new book How Constitutional Rights Matter won the Best Book Prize for 2019 and 2020 from the International Society of Public Law and the Best Book Award from the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
In 2017, Versteeg was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, which provided her with a $200,000 award to expand her research into the world's constitutions to better understand how constitutional rights are enforced in different countries. Versteeg has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Columbia Law School, the Hebrew University, the University of Hamburg, Tel Aviv University and IDC Herzliya.