 Although constitutionalism has been widely embraced round the world, it is by no means without its detractors. This is especially true when we turn to those constitutions that not only create and regulate the offices of government but also purport to protect abstract rights of political morality. Some critics—we’ll call these the hard critics—assert that such apparently rights-protective constitutions cannot effectively and legitimately serve to protect individuals against the oppressive forces of  governments.[24]  On the contrary, they only serve to mask legal and political practice in a false cloak of legitimacy. Other critics—we’ll call these the democratic critics—are not so utterly dismissive of rights-protecting constitutions. Rather, their main concern is to challenge the role that democratically unaccountable judges typically play in the interpretation and application of such constitutions.