constitution

constitution, the body of doctrines and practices that form the fundamental organizing principle of a political state. In some cases, such as the United States, the constitution is a specific written document. In others, such as the United Kingdom, it is a collection of documents, statutes, and traditional practices that are generally accepted as governing political matters. States that have a written constitution may also have a body of traditional or customary practices that may or may not be considered to be of constitutional standing. Virtually every state claims to have a constitution, but not every government conducts itself in a consistently constitutional manner.

The general idea of a constitution and of constitutionalism originated with the ancient Greeks and especially in the systematic, theoretical, normative, and descriptive writings of Aristotle. In his Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Constitution of Athens, and other works, Aristotle used the Greek word for constitution (politeia) in several different senses. The simplest and most neutral of these was “the arrangement of the offices in a polis” (state). In this purely descriptive sense of the word, every state has a constitution, no matter how badly or erratically governed it may be.

This article deals with the theories and classical conceptions of constitutions as well as the features and practice of constitutional government throughout the world. For specific discussion of the U.S. Constitution, see Constitution of the United States of America.

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Theories about constitutions

Aristotle’s classification of the “forms of government” was intended as a classification of constitutions, both good and bad. Under good constitutions—monarchy, aristocracy, and the mixed kind to which Aristotle applied the same term politeia—one person, a few individuals, or the many rule in the interest of the whole polis. Under the bad constitutions—tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy—the tyrant, the rich oligarchs, or the poor dēmos, or people, rule in their own interest alone.

Aristotle regarded the mixed constitution as the best arrangement of offices in the polis. Such a politeia would contain monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements. Its citizens, after learning to obey, were to be given opportunities to participate in ruling. This was a privilege only of citizens, however, since neither noncitizens nor slaves would have been admitted by Aristotle or his contemporaries in the Greek city-states. Aristotle regarded some humans as natural slaves, a point on which later Roman philosophers, especially the Stoics and jurists, disagreed with him. Although slavery was at least as widespread in Rome as in Greece, Roman law generally recognized a basic equality among all humans. This was because, the Stoics argued, all humans are endowed by nature with a spark of reason by means of which they can perceive a universal natural law that governs all the world and can bring their behaviour into harmony with it.

Roman law thus added to Aristotelian notions of constitutionalism the concepts of a generalized equality, a universal regularity, and a hierarchy of types of laws. Aristotle had already drawn a distinction between the constitution (politeia), the laws (nomoi), and something more ephemeral that corresponds to what could be described as day-to-day policies (psēphismata). The latter might be based upon the votes cast by the citizens in their assembly and might be subject to frequent changes, but nomoi, or laws, were meant to last longer. The Romans conceived of the all-encompassing rational law of nature as the eternal framework to which constitutions, laws, and policies should conform—the constitution of the universe.

Influence of the church

Christianity endowed this universal constitution with a clearly monarchical cast. The Christian God, it came to be argued, was the sole ruler of the universe, and his laws were to be obeyed. Christians were under an obligation to try to constitute their earthly cities on the model of the City of God.

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Both the church and the secular authorities with whom the church came into conflict in the course of the Middle Ages needed clearly defined arrangements of offices, functions, and jurisdictions. Medieval constitutions, whether of church or state, were considered legitimate because they were believed to be ordained of God or tradition or both. Confirmation by officers of the Christian Church was regarded as a prerequisite of the legitimacy of secular rulers. Coronation ceremonies were incomplete without a bishop’s participation. The Holy Roman emperor travelled to Rome in order to receive his crown from the pope. Oaths, including the coronation oaths of rulers, could be sworn only in the presence of the clergy because oaths constituted promises to God and invoked divine punishment for violations. Even in an imposition of a new constitutional order, novelty could always be legitimized by reference to an alleged return to a more or less fictitious “ancient constitution.” It was only in Italy during the Renaissance and in England after the Reformation that the “great modern fallacy” (as the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt called it) was established, according to which citizens could rationally and deliberately adopt a new constitution to meet their needs.