Constraint on the ruler

A constitution adopted by one faction is defended by that faction alone. Elect or choose by lot a drafting assembly separate from the sitting government; publish every draft; take written comments from anyone for at least three months; hold hearings in every district.

Adopt by a supermajority — two-thirds of the assembly and a majority of voters in a referendum. Make amendment at least as hard: Sweden requires two identical votes with a general election between them, so no sitting majority can rewrite the rules in its own favour before voters have a say. The Venice Commission's Rule of Law Checklist is the reference for what the text must secure.

Making rules, carrying them out, and judging disputes go to three sets of hands. The assembly legislates and votes the budget; the executive administers within the law and the budget; courts judge, including disputes with the other two. Nobody holds office in two branches at once.

Set four offices at arm's length from all three, each with a fixed term and removable only for stated cause by a supermajority: the audit office, the statistics office, the election commission and the central bank. Each guards a number or a process that the people in power have reason to bend.

List them in plain words, enforceable by any person in any court. The core set comes from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966):

• Life, and freedom from torture and slavery.
• Liberty: no detention without lawful cause; anyone detained is brought before a judge promptly — the UN Human Rights Committee reads that as within 48 hours — and may challenge the detention in court, the old writ of habeas corpus.
• A fair, public trial before an independent court; innocent until proved guilty; no punishment for an act that was lawful when done.
• Equality before the law, without discrimination.
• Privacy of home, correspondence and personal data.
• Freedom of thought, conscience, belief, expression, assembly and association.
• A part in public affairs: to vote and to stand in genuine, periodic elections.
• Education, and a share in the community's common protections.

A right with no court to enforce it is a wish. Give the highest court, or a constitutional court, the power to declare a law or an official act void where it breaks the constitution, on a claim by anyone it affects.

Protect the judges who must rule against the powerful: appointed on merit by an independent commission; serving to a fixed retirement age or for one long term; pay that cannot be cut while they serve; removable only for incapacity or proved misconduct, by a supermajority after a hearing. The UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary (1985) set this out.

Fixed terms for every elected office, with election dates set by law, not by whoever holds office. A limit on consecutive terms for the head of the executive. A procedure to remove an office-holder mid-term for stated grave cause: charged by the assembly, tried by a different body, needing a supermajority.

Run elections through an independent electoral commission, to the standards in elections: universal, equal, free and secret suffrage, and no change to the electoral rules in the year before a vote (Venice Commission, Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters). The photograph shows the whole process in the open: posted voter lists, screened booths, sealed boxes.

Constitutional orders are usually suspended before they fall, in an emergency that never ends. Write the emergency rule at the start, on the same principle as the 72-hour limit in deciding how you decide. South Africa's constitution (section 37) is a working model: a declared emergency lapses after 21 days unless the assembly extends it, for no more than three months at a time, and every extension after the first needs 60 % of members.

• Elections cannot be postponed and the assembly cannot be dissolved because of the emergency.
• Courts stay open to review every emergency measure.
• Some rights cannot be suspended at all. Article 4 of the ICCPR lists them: life; freedom from torture and slavery; no imprisonment for debt; no punishment for an act that was lawful when done; recognition as a person before the law; freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Any body that carries arms — a police force or a defence force — is created by law, funded by the assembly's vote, commanded through the civil executive, and inspected by a civilian body that reports in public. Its members swear loyalty to the constitution, not to a person, and it takes no part in elections or in judging.

A defence force may act inside the territory only in support of the police, under a law that says when, for how long, and under whose orders. The standards for policing — force only when necessary and in proportion — are in policing.

A constitution people do not know protects nobody. Print it cheaply enough for a copy in every household, in every language spoken in the territory, and teach it in every school: what the rights are, and how to claim one.

Count each year the constitutional claims brought, how many succeeded, how long they took, and whether every judgment against the government was obeyed. One judgment ignored without consequence ends the constitution's force, so the assembly and the audit office report compliance in public.