The Danish Bill of Rights
October 10, 2006The Danish Constitution doesn’t enumerate a specific set of rights in the same was as the US Bill of Rights. The rights are mentioned, but are sprinkled throughout the document unstructured manner. I have compiled them here for easy reference.
§ 43
No taxes shall be imposed, altered, or repealed except by statute; nor shall any man be conscripted or any public loan be raised except by statute.
§ 67
Citizens shall be at liberty to form congregations for the worship of God in a manner according with their convictions, provided that nothing contrary to good morals or public order shall be taught or done.
§ 70
No person shall by reason of his creed or descent be deprived of access to the full enjoyment of civic and political rights, nor shall he escape compliance with any common civic duty for such reasons.
§ 71
(1) Personal liberty shall be inviolable. No Danish subject shall, in any manner whatsoever, be deprived of his liberty because of his political or religious convictions or because of his descent.
(2) A person shall be deprived of his liberty only where this is warranted by law.
(3) Any person who is taken into custody shall be brought before a judge within twenty-four hours. Where the person taken into custody cannot be immediately released, the judge shall decide, in an order to be given as soon as possible and at the latest within three days, stating the grounds, whether the person taken into custody shall be committed to prison; and in cases where he can be released on bail, shall also determine the nature and amount of such bail. This provision may be departed from by statute as far as Greenland is concerned, if for local considerations such departure may be deemed necessary.
(4) The pronouncement of the judge may be separately appealed against at once to a higher court of justice by the person concerned.
(5) No person shall be remanded in custody for an offence which can involve only punishment by fine or mitigated imprisonment (hæfte).
(6) Outside criminal procedure, the legality of deprivation of liberty not executed by order of a judicial authority, and not warranted by legislation relating to aliens, shall at the request of the person so deprived of his liberty, or the request of any person acting on his behalf, be brought before the ordinary courts of justice or other judicial authority for decision. Rules governing this procedure shall be provided by statute.
(7) The persons referred to in sub-section (6) shall be under supervision by a board set up by the Folketing, to which board the persons concerned shall be permitted to apply.
§ 72
The dwelling shall be inviolable. House search, seizure, and examination of letters and other papers, or any breach of the secrecy that shall be observed in postal, telegraph, and telephone matters, shall not take place except under a judicial order, unless particular exception is warranted by statute.
§ 73
(1) The right of property shall be inviolable. No person shall be ordered to surrender his property except where required in the public interest. It shall be done only as provided by statute and against full compensation.
(2) Where a Bill has been passed relating to the expropriation of property, one-third of the members of the Folketing may, within three weekdays from the final passing of such Bill, demand that it shall not be presented for the Royal Assent until new elections to the Folketing have been held and the Bill has again been passed by the Folketing assembling thereafter.
(3) Any question of the legality of an act of expropriation, and the amount of compensation, may be brought before the courts of justice. The hearing of issues relating to the amount of the compensation may by statute by referred to courts of justice established for such purpose.
§ 74
Any restraint on the free and equal access to trade, which is not based on the public interest, shall be abolished by statute.
§ 75
(1) In order to advance the public interest, efforts shall be made to guarantee work for every ablebodied citizen on terms that will secure his existence.
(2) Any person unable to support himself or his dependants shall, where no other person is responsible for his or their maintenance, be entitled to receive public assistance, provided that he shall comply with the obligations imposed by statute in such respect.
§ 76
All children of school age shall be entitled to free instruction in primary schools. Parents or guardians making their own arrangements for their children or wards to receive instruction equivalent to the general primary school standard shall not be obliged to have their children or wards taught in a publicly provided school.
§ 77
Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to his being held responsible in a court of law. Censorship and other preventive measures shall never again be introduced.
§ 78
(1) Citizens shall, without previous permission, be free to form associations for any lawful purpose.
(2) Associations employing violence, or aiming at the attainment of their object by violence, by instigation to violence, or by similar punishable influence on persons holding other views, shall be dissolved by court judgement.
(3) No association shall be dissolved by any government measure; but an association may be temporarily prohibited, provided that immediate proceedings be taken for its dissolution.
(4) Cases relating to the dissolution of political associations may, without special permission, be brought before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Realm.
(5) The legal effects of the dissolution shall be determined by statute.
§ 79
Citizens shall, without previous permission, be at liberty to assemble unarmed. The police shall be entitled to be present at public meetings. Open-air meetings may be prohibited when it is feared that they may constitute a danger to the public peace.
§ 80
In the event of riots the armed forces may not take action, unless attacked, until after the crowd has three times been called upon to disperse in the name of the King and the law and such warning has gone unheeded.
§ 81
Every male person able to bear arms shall be liable with his person to contribute to the defence of his country under such rules as are laid down by statute.
My immediate reaction is that there are way too many occurrences of “except by statute”. This is a blank check to the legislative branch to do what they want.
The now famous Danish right to free speech is thankfully present without exceptions in § 77, but property rights (§ 73) and the protection against undue search (§ 72) don’t fare so well. A court order is necessary for a search unless a statute says otherwise. There are already today many such exceptions for anti terror, tax evation, non payment of TV license (Lau, points out below that this isn’t true) etc. are exceptions to the rule.
The worst part are the positive rights imposed by § 75 and § 76. These kinds of rights should never be allowed in a constitution. In particular as there are no exceptions here. This means that in effect that these rights are stronger in the Danish constitution than say your property rights or your rights against undue searches. Positive rights are favorites for big government types, because it gives them lots of extra power.
One interesting bit part which unfortunately is limited and is little known is that in § 29 the section about suffrage there is an interesting little point:
(2) of this section shall have the right to vote at Folketing elections, provided that he has not been declared incapable of conducting his own affairs. It shall be laid down by statute to what extent conviction and public assistance amounting to poor relief within the meaning of the law shall entail disfranchisement.
This actually allows the government to cut voters rights for people on public assistance. Of course the political parties are not stupid in Denmark. They know the more voters they can bribe, the more power they receive. I believe older versions of the constitution had this as compulsory. Lotte Noer was stripped of her official duties for stating that we need to enable this again.
This is a part in my series critically analyzing the Danish Constitution.
Comments:
I know that a lot of people think that the TV/radio/broadband license "gestapo" can legally search your home, but they don't. You don't have to open the door or let them in. Just tell them to go away.
But as you mention, there are a lot of other exceptions to your property rights, where officials can break into your home without a warrant.
Rights need to be absolute, otherwise there's not much of a point. The US constitution also has a lot of amendments that waters down property rights. Eminent domain for instance.
Posted by: Lau at October 11, 2006 08:00 AM
Lau, the point of limiting certain property rights in the US Constitution is that the constitution itself specifies limits and exceptions. In the case of the Danish Constitution, these limits and exceptions are "invioable" unless "warranted by statute." This leaves the legislature with the power to create exceptions to the constitution, and this is one of the things that the US Framers sought to prevent.
The danger lies not in the day to day implementation of the constitution and resulting statutes. The danger exists during times of turmoil when extremist leaders may feel compelled to enact laws that would have been at one time unthinkable.
Posted by: Will Kamishlian at October 12, 2006 12:58 PM
To Lau,
Eminent Domain is original with the Bill of Rights (Amendment V) and pre-existed the Constitution under both colonial governments and the Confederation. Remember that the Bill of Rights did not come later, but were adopted together with the Constitution. These first ten amendments were demanded by the states and people as a precondition to accepting the Constitution, without which the new government would have had a freer hand in declaring (after the fact) what rights remained to the people and to the states.
The Fifth Amendment put a limit on government 'takings', specifically, by requiring such takings would be only for "public use" and that "just compensation" would be made for them. Even this much of a concession to government was a bad idea, and there is little reason government should not have had to negotiate to obtain the property it needs.
To Will Kamishlian,
The danger exists in all times, not least of all when there is not the least hint of danger and the leaders in question seem entirely reasonable. Extremists, unpopular leaders, and political enemies raise our suspicions we are in danger from them. 'Moderate' politicians, contrarily, often get us to go along with proposals we'd be on our guard against given those we regard extreme are the ones making them. Some of the worst things done to us, things that put us increasingly under the spell of government to overrule our independence and judgment, are done in the name of "the public good" by those we trust most. The demagogues to watch out for, then, are not those we disagree with, but rather those we agree with enthusiastically.
Freedom is not lost all at once or to raving lunatics capable of overwhelming an entire free society. It is lost piecemeal, one bit of benignly helpful legislation at a time. It is not lost to demands for draconian, inhuman exploitation of strangers or underclass, it is lost to demands originating from ourselves to: eliminate urban blight, cynically cite children or poor or weak when they are not at issue, elevate the 'rights' of criminals and non-citizens over those of citizens, favor some over others, encourage judges to 'interpret' broader meaning than are written into the Constitution, allow a majority to override guarantees of personal rights when they are inconvenient or dangerous or "times have changed". Most significantly, freedom is not lost because some rogue has come among us to 'steal' our birthright; it is lost because we, ourselves, demand government take it from us in exchange for 'security' ... a security no government can realistically provide.
Posted by: Bob Stapler at November 6, 2006 08:49 PM
I don't think the exception "by statute" are any different from "martial law" in the US.
You also have to realize that Denmark (unlike for instance the US) has signed the international Human Rights treaty, and that treaty overrules any national laws. The human rights have the same or higher legal authority than the constitution.
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