… there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person's life and conduct which affects only himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation.
… there is … in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation; and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and more formidable.
John Stuart MillIn Chapter 26 we illustrated why individuals might choose to define certain rights to act in the constitution. The existence of these sorts of constitutionally protected rights is often regarded as an essential prerequisite for a free society. Such rights protect the liberty of all citizens and are associated with classic definitions of liberalism as put forward by John Stuart Mill (1859). In a short note published in 1970, Nobel prize-winner Amartya Sen (1970b) explored the notion of liberalism from a public/social choice perspective. This note proved yet another impossibility theorem of the Arrow variety, and precipitated a lengthy and often vigorous debate over both the implications of the theorem and the concept of liberalism itself.
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