Long lists of rights have become a hallmark of global constitutionalism. This rights inflation has largely been cheered on by commentators arguing that enshrining more rights will help produce more just societies. In contrast, we argue that adding more de jure rights to constitutions can provide governments with excuses to ignore rights they disfavor, which in turn can lead to erosion of de facto rights protections. We explore this theory using a mixed-methods approach, which includes a survey experiment administered during a constitutional referendum in Chile, event studies using cross-country data from 1946 to 2018, and a qualitative case study investigating the adoption of Russia’s 1993 constitution. We find evidence that the public believes that adding more rights to a constitution is costless, but our quantitative and qualitative data suggests that new constitutions that include many rights have worse de facto rights protections than ones with fewer rights.

scoco@ceibs.edu