a bill of rights is to stop tyranny: and arbitrary government. Especially executive government. It is a sphere of liberty that government cannot trespass on. It is also the basis for the contract by which people agree to be governed.
For instance no-one would rationally submit to executive authority unless there was a writ of habeous corpeous. Otherwise an individual is such as well off being in a state of nature; as in both system the individual is suffering under the arbitrary will of another - which is tyranny.
Another example is the halting of discrimination against an individual for their skin colour or religious beliefs. Again, if an individual were to suffer under such a tyrannous system then they may as well be in a state of nature.
Arbitrary government is ultimately destructive and a bill of rights place an explicit and easily identifiable limit on legislative and executive government.
It also gives people a means to appeal to the judicial when the executive and legislative have crossed it. Especially now that executive decree is becoming the standard form of government in liberal democracy.
The Prime Minister is firstly a parliamentarian.
I don\'t agree with that. The PM is a hidden and informal executive who carries the full power of the executive, heads the executive cabinet and advises the GG.
The problem with a parliamentary system is that the executive can make a tyrannous law, and as a legislator have it passed and funded, then as executive put that tyrannous law into action. The only buffer against that is a bill of rights and the judicial.
The embedding of the executive in the legislative is a hack, or a persistent bug, that is left over from when the British Parliament tried to neuter the executive power of the King but weren\'t strong enough to remove the King entirely.
Nations that don\'t have to take a monarch into account as a ceremonial figure separate out the executive.
cam
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