What if a bad supreme court can come in and take away rights? If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter if it’s explicitly listed in some kind of constitutional document because the bad court can choose to interpret that document in such a way that the right disappears. By this definition, there’s no such thing as a right, because there’s always someone who can come in and take it away. There aren’t, and can not be, any actual rights, just conditional privileges.
But, that isn’t a very useful definition. In some sense, it’s obviously true. If a warlord takes over a country they might suddenly forbid something everybody assumed was a right. That’s why we have the saying “might makes right”. Fundamentally the only rights you really have are the ones that you’re strong enough to prevent someone from taking away. It certainly helps to have them written down in some kind of founding document, but it’s no guarantee of anything.
What if a bad supreme court can come in and take away rights? If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter if it’s explicitly listed in some kind of constitutional document because the bad court can choose to interpret that document in such a way that the right disappears. By this definition, there’s no such thing as a right, because there’s always someone who can come in and take it away. There aren’t, and can not be, any actual rights, just conditional privileges.
But, that isn’t a very useful definition. In some sense, it’s obviously true. If a warlord takes over a country they might suddenly forbid something everybody assumed was a right. That’s why we have the saying “might makes right”. Fundamentally the only rights you really have are the ones that you’re strong enough to prevent someone from taking away. It certainly helps to have them written down in some kind of founding document, but it’s no guarantee of anything.