APP’s Constitution contains two breakthroughs
By Bruce Pardy, published by the Western Standard
A free country must resolve a paradox: a state is needed to keep the peace, yet the state’s monopoly on force is also the greatest threat to liberty. Law professor Bruce Pardy argues that Alberta’s constitution should therefore do two unusual things to protect citizens and restrain the state: forbid force itself, so that government is empowered only to stop people from coercing others; and reverse the default, granting the state no powers except those the constitution expressly lists.
The Alberta Prosperity Project’s draft constitution flirts with both ideas, notes Pardy, but does not yet lock them together. He envisions stripping the document to two foundations in order to create the architecture a genuinely free Alberta needs: “a constitution unlike any the world has seen.”
Read this commentary in full at the publisher’s website here.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
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