Professor Matthew Adler has argued that many constitutional rights are not personal moral rights, but that are pragmatic and instrumental in nature. 1 The reason rights are not personal, in Adlerthe constitutionality of a statute depends not just on how it affects someone, but on what it sayspersonal” legal disability that would set him apart from any other citizen, and is, therefore, not enforcing a personal right. Instead, Adler believes that constitutional rights are better understood as positive-law creations that allow (...) citizens to sue as private attorneys-general. (shrink)