Can charters of rights limit penal populism?: The case of preventive detention

The question of whether charters of rights are desirable is a controversial one. Those who support such instruments often point to the capacity of governments - and those who elected them - to behave tyrannically. The implication is that charters can improve the position of minorities targeted by state action of this kind. Those who oppose human rights charters sometimes concede that governments can 'move... from forcefulness to tyranny'. But, if they do accept this, such commentators do not accept that such charters are effective to protect disfavoured groups against such majoritarian excesses. Indeed, the former High Court Justice, Dyson Heydon, has recently claimed that '[t]here are other techniques for [human rights] protection, some of which can be developed more intensely than they have been', which are likely better to achieve their object than are instruments such as the 'Human Rights Act 1998' (UK) c 42 ('HRA') and the 'European Convention on Human Rights' ('ECHR').