Taking Some Things Off the Table
“[S]uccessful constitutions limit the stakes of politics. That is, they place bounds on the range of political choices, in part by assigning citizen rights and other limits on governmental decision making. The greater the range of social issues subject to political decision making, the greater the stakes.”
“The rule of law rests, first, on the inability of the one or the few to control the many, and second, on the willingness of the many to leave some scope for universal rights.”
-Gretchen Helmke and Frances Rosenbluth (2009)