Limits, aspirations and identity

Function 3: limits on government. Suppose the lawful authority passed patently unfair laws: banning your religion, forbidding certain colours of clothing or songs, forcing one caste or religion to serve others, allowing arbitrary arrest, or letting only people of one skin colour draw water. Even if passed by proper procedure, such laws would be unjust.

• So the third function of a constitution is to set limits on what a government can impose on its citizens, limits it may never trespass.
• The most common way is to list fundamental rights no government may violate. Most constitutions protect citizens from arbitrary arrest and guarantee basic liberties: freedom of speech, conscience, association, and to conduct a trade or business. These may be limited during a national emergency, under conditions the constitution specifies.

Function 4: aspirations and goals. Older constitutions mostly allocated power and limited government. Many 20th-century constitutions, of which India's is the finest example, also enable the government to do positive things and express a society's aspirations.

• Societies with deep inequalities must empower government to take positive steps against inequality and deprivation. India aspires to be free of caste discrimination, so the government must be enabled to work for it; South Africa's new constitution had to enable the government to end racial discrimination.
• India's framers wanted everyone to have what they need for a life of minimal dignity and self-respect: minimum material well-being, education and so on. Such enabling provisions are supported by the Preamble, found in the Fundamental Rights, and in the Directive Principles of State Policy.
• Other constitutions do this too: South Africa's asks the government to conserve nature, protect those facing unfair discrimination, and progressively ensure housing and health care; Indonesia's requires a national education system and care for poor and destitute children.
• So the fourth function is to enable the government to fulfil society's aspirations and create conditions for a just society.

Function 5: the fundamental identity of a people. By agreeing on basic norms about how and by whom we are governed, people form a collective political identity. The constitution is also the framework within which we pursue our own goals, setting values we may not trespass, so it gives a moral identity too.

• Constitutions share much (democracy, basic rights) but differ in how they express national identity. German identity, for example, was constituted by being ethnically German; the Indian Constitution does not make ethnic identity a criterion for citizenship. Nations also differ in how they define relations between regions and the central government.

In short, a constitution's five functions: coordination and assurance; specifying who decides; limiting government; enabling government to fulfil aspirations; and expressing a people's fundamental identity.

Example (new): a constitutional rule that no citizen can be denied a passport because of their religion limits government; a rule asking the state to provide free legal aid to the poor enables it.