Protecting Rights

taken from "Virtues in a Democracy," Oliver F. Williams, C.S.C and John W. Houck (Eds.)

American institutions already reflect an ingenious answer to the need to combine consensus making and the moral power of virtues with a democratic polity. Instead of allowing unrestrained sway to policies that reflect majorities, we have the well known "balancing" institutions, whose task is not only to curb one another to limit the general power of each, but specifically in order to protect the rights of individuals and minorities. The same protection is, of course, accorded by the courts, above all the Supreme Court, and the Constitution itself not only as a force that directs law enforcement, regulatory, administrative and other agencies but also as a moral/social, normative factor. (William Galston, in an important paper presented at the l991 American Political Science Meeting, provides an excellent discussion of that point, especially by pointing out the role which "supermajoritarian" requirements built into American democracy play in this country. That is, for a number of significant political measures, simple majorities cannot define what is of merit or virtue while, say, overriding a presidential veto. [Galston, 1991])

In short, the American political system is far from a simple democratic government if one means by that, as it is all too often put, the rule of the majority, or of the people by the people for the people. Constitutional democracy is, of course, characterized in part by defining areas over which "the people" or the majority may not set policies, whatever its size.