Robert George on constitutions and the power of governments

Governments doing things for people may sound positive and benevolent, but there is always a trade-off: less freedom, says visiting US professor Robert George.

We might have expected that someone who has spent his career studying the protective function of written constitutions was in New Zealand to tell us we’re in grave danger unless we get one. But Robert George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, says we already have a serviceable constitution; it’s just largely informal – not written down. What concerns him, however, is our rejection of further freedom protecting measures, such as the notion of a bicameral Parliament (one with two chambers). During a lecture trip, co-sponsored by the Maxim Institute and the ...

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