Does putting a right in a constitution cause governments to actually respect it in practice? Drawing on a wide variety of methods—including survey experiments, statistical analyses, and case studies from around the world—this book explains that whether constitutional rights matter depends on the type of right.

For constitutional rights to be respected, citizens must be able to punish their government for violations. Orchestrating the kind of collective actions needed to punish governments is difficult for citizens hoping to protect individual rights, like the freedom of speech and the prohibition of torture, because the costs of activism are often not worth it for any one person. And given that individual rights often lack natural constituencies that can collectively organize to overcome this problem, governments may be able to violate these rights with impunity.

But some rights have built-in constituencies able to mobilize for their protection. These constituencies exists for rights practiced by organizations, like religious groups, trade unions, and political parties. When these groups are protected by the constitution, they can use it as a tool in their legal and political advocacy. As a result, organizational constitutional rights are systematically associated with better respect for those rights.

However, even highly organized groups armed with the constitution cannot always stop repressive governments bent on violating rights. But when groups take advantage of their organizational infrastructure to use the constitution strategically they can often slow or halt repression, even in authoritarian settings.