ABSTRACT
Human rights are established in conception and principle and are national and international law for many nations. There is common agreement that every individual has both political-civil and economic-social claims upon his society. Constitutions are at best promises, and constitutional promises often remain unfulfilled. But what a constitution promises tells us what a society pretends or aspires to, where individual rights stand in its political system and scale of values, and much about how rights fare in fact. Constitution has acquired a more general significance describing a nation’s “basic document.” There are constitutions in countries with an ideology antithetical to “constitutionalism,” constitutions that do not “constitute” a government, limit its powers, or otherwise protect individual rights. The US Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and its close kin the French Declaration of the Rights of Man have been models for some constitutions and have influenced many others, directly or through the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which borrowed trom them.
