Explain the concept of majority rule with minority rights - Essay Example

So majority rule is a means of organizing government and deciding public issues, it is not just another road to oppression. The main feature of democratic state is the absence of self-appointed group that has the right to oppress the others. That means that any majority, even in a democracy, should take away the basic rights and freedoms of a minority group or an individual. A democratic country is the country with the Constitution that commits the nation to secularism and equality for all its citizens without discrimination, and guarantees the rights of minorities.

Minority rights, as applying to ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples, are an integral part of international human rights law. Like children's rights, women's rights, and refugee rights, minority rights are "a legal framework designed to ensure that a specific group which is in a vulnerable, disadvantaged or marginalized position in society, is able to achieve equality and is protected from persecution"3. The point is that democracy is a system in which all citizens of the state have a guaranteed possibility to make free political decisions by majority rule.

But it is very important to realize that a political decision made by the majority is not necessary lawful, as well as majority rule is not for sure democratic. Here we should refer to the Rule of Law, the concept of which has been laid down by Albert Venn Dicey. According to Dicey, there are three principles, which establish the rule of law: 1. The absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power; 2. Equality before the law or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary courts; 3.

The law of the constitution is a consequence of the rights of individuals as defined and enforced by the courts. So, it is necessary to provide the majority rule with individual human rights grantees, which will be able to protect the rights of minorities. The important issue here is that the minority rights by no means are dependable on majority will. They exist independently, and therefore they can not be eliminated by the majority vote. The ground basis of minority rights protection lays in the principle that democratic laws serve to protect the right of all the citizens of the country.

The guarantees of such protection must be implemented in the supreme law of the state, i.e. Constitution. In order to demonstrate how these concepts are incorporated into the U.S. Constitution let us consider two examples, explaining each in reference to the intent of constitutional authors.The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution may be called the most important document serving to protect the rights of any minority of Americans. Since America is a heterogeneous society, almost all people hold at least one minority trait, opinion, belief, behavior, interest, or preference.

At the micro-political level of interaction each person is a minority of one. According to Ayn Rand, the "smallest minority on earth is the