Aspirations and goals of a society

Setting limits on government is the older, more traditional job of a constitution, and most constitutions written in earlier centuries stopped there — allocating decision-making power and then capping it. But many twentieth-century constitutions, and the Indian Constitution stands out as an especially strong example, go further: they don't merely restrain the government, they actively enable it to pursue positive goals and to work toward the aspirations of the society it governs. This matters most in societies with deep, entrenched inequalities, which need government not just to be restrained but to be positively empowered to act against those inequalities.

India's own aspiration to be a society free of caste discrimination is a case in point: turning that aspiration into reality requires the government to be actively enabled — even legally obligated in places — to take the necessary steps. South Africa, a country with its own deep history of racial discrimination, needed its new constitution to specifically enable its government to work toward ending that discrimination. Elsewhere, constitutions go further still: South Africa's constitution assigns the government responsibility for conserving nature, protecting groups facing unfair discrimination, and progressively ensuring housing and healthcare for all; Indonesia's constitution obliges its government to run a national education system and to look after poor and destitute children. …