Paper Rights: Why Constitutions Promise What They Never Enforce, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and India, UK

What happens when a right exists in the Constitution, but not in the life of the person it is meant to protect? In Paper Rights, Gilbert Azigi examines the gap between constitutional promises and lived reality, asking whether a right is truly a right simply because it has been written into law. Focusing on Ghana and drawing comparisons with constitutional systems including Nigeria, Kenya, India, the United Kingdom and the United States, the book explores how constitutional rights are written, interpreted, limited and, most importantly, enforced. Through a student’s critical examination of constitutional law, Paper Rights challenges readers to look beyond the language of legal texts and ask what those words actually do for ordinary people. Because a right written on paper is only the beginning. The real question is whether the law can make that right real.This work of legal analysis and political argument. It is not legal advice. Constitutional texts, statutes, and judgments are discussed from publicly available sources and summarised, not reproduced in full. The failures documented here are institutional. They are a claim that the architecture of unenforced rights is a global constitutional habit, and that Ghana has practised it with particular clarity.