> I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases. Yes, I get tha

> I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases. Yes, I get that. I'm not talking about individual liability, I'm talking about institutional budgets. I'm saying that if acknowledging rights generally costs a large sum of money (in your hypothetical, in payments to people who have had their rights infringed upon) you will see less of it, as pressure gets put on legislators and judges to save money. To take the recent example of gay marriage, I would expect the phrase "we can't let them marry, there's a budget crunch going on" to be used unironically. I think that what you're advocating for would end up with less of what you seem to actually want (you seem to want people's rights to be respected).