CONSTITUTION

the body of doctrines and practices that form the fundamental organizing principle of a political state. In some states, 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 written constitutions 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 idea of a constitution was first elaborated by Aristotle in his classification of governments as monarchies, tyrannies, aristocracies, oligarchies, democracies, and so on. For Aristotle, the best form of governmentthe best constitutionwas that which combined elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in such a way that the citizens of every class were enabled to enjoy their respective privileges and encouraged to exercise their respective responsibilities in the interest of the whole. In the Rome of the Stoic philosophers, government was viewed as organized and conducted under the rule of a universal reason and thus as reflecting a kind of universal constitution. This universalism was taken over by medieval Christian thinkers, who held that God's rule over the universe was the type of the justly constituted earthly state, a monarchy. The modern idea of a constitution began to emerge after the Reformation, particularly in the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who developed the notion of the social contract. In the social-contract view, a people agree among themselves to give up a portion of the absolute freedom that characterizes the pre-social state of nature in return for the security that an acknowledged sovereign government can provide. It was Locke's work particularly, on the division of rights between those assigned to the government and those retained by individuals and on the division of powers within the government, that influenced the late 18th-century authors of the American Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. A constitution, to be worthy of the name, must contain provisions for certain political attributes: stability, both of form and of procedure; yet, on the other hand, adaptability to the social, economic, technological, and other changes that are inevitable in the life of a state; accountability of those in power to some other organ of the state, such as an electorate; representation of the governed within the government; openness in the conduct of government; and division of power among distinct branches of government. Constitutional government is thus limited government, and it is a chief function of a constitution to serve as the standard of legitimacy by which governments may be judged. In its wider sense, the term constitution means the whole scheme whereby a country is governed; and this includes much else besides law. The constitutional lawyer must constantly keep glancing backward into constitutional history; he must also keep his eye on current political practice and the day-to-day working of political institutions. In its narrower sense, constitution means the leading legal rules, usually collected into some document that comes to be almost venerated as The Constitution. But no country's constitution can ever be compressed within the compass of one document, and even where the attempt has been made, it is necessary to consider the extralegal rules, customs, and conventions that grow up around the formal document. 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. Additional reading Current texts of more than 150 national constitutions are available in English translation in Albert P. Blaustein and Gisbert H. Flanz (eds.), Constitutions of the Countries of the World, 20 vol. (1971 ), issued in looseleaf format and updated frequently. Another compendium of constitutions is Amos J. Peaslee, Constitutions of Nations, rev. 3rd ed. by Dorothy Peaslee Xydis, 4 vol. in 7 (196570), and a rev. 4th ed. of vol. 12 (197485). Famous constitutions, at the national as well as subnational levels, are collected in Albert P. Blaustein and Jay A. Sigler (eds.), Constitutions That Made History (1988). John J. Wuest and Manfred C. Vernon (eds.), New Source Book in Major European Governments (1966), provides excerpts of constitutional documents of the major governments in Europe.An intellectual overview is provided by A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 10th ed. (1959, reissued 1985). Aristotle's classic work on politics is available as The Politics of Aristotle, trans. and ed. by Ernest Barker (1946, reissued 1972); while more recent classic works are collected in Ernest Barker (ed.), Social Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume, and Rousseau (1947, reissued 1980). Robert R. Bowie and Carl J. Friedrich (eds.), Studies in Federalism (1954), is another important source. William S. Livingston, Federalism and Constitutional Change (1956, reprinted 1974), stands as the best study of constitutional change. Herbert J. Spiro, Government by Constitution: The Political Systems of Democracy (1959), is a valuable study, while his Responsibility in Government: Theory and Practice (1969) focuses on the related problems of accountability and responsibility. Carl J. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy: Theory and Practice in Europe and America, 4th ed. (1968), is a comprehensive treatment. Additional important works include Ivor Jennings, Cabinet Government, 3rd ed. (1969); Edward McWhinney, Judicial Review, 4th ed. (1969), and Constitution-Making: Principles, Process, Practice (1981); and Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (eds.), Constitutionalism and Democracy (1988).Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867, reissued 1993), remains a classic exposition. The best history of the origins of English constitutionalism is Charles Howard McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy: An Historical Essay on the Boundaries Between Legislation and Adjudication in England (1910, reprinted 1979). Francis Dunham Wormuth, The Origins of Modern Constitutionalism (1949), is another useful work.Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist (1788), has been reissued many times and is indispensable for understanding the origins of American constitutionalism. The basis of American constitutionalism is ably traced in Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (1988); and David A.J. Richards, Foundations of American Constitutionalism (1989). Discussions of the impact of the American constitution upon the political process include Sarah Baumgartner Thurow (ed.), Constitutionalism in America, vol. 3, Constitutionalism in Perspective: The United States Constitution in Twentieth Century Politics (1988); and Corwin & Peltason's Understanding the Constitution, 13th ed. by J.W. Peltason (1991).Samuel H. Beer and Adam B. Ulam (eds.), Patterns of Government: The Major Political Systems of Europe, 3rd ed. (1973), provides a useful analysis. Studies of French constitutionalism include Stanley Hoffmann et al., In Search of France (1963), and Decline or Renewal?: France Since the 1930s (1974). Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (1967, reprinted 1992; originally published in German, 1965), is a sociological account; it is complemented by Arnold J. Heidenheimer and Donald P. Kommers, The Governments of Germany, 4th ed. (1975). The concept of congruence between political and social patterns of authority is examined in Harry Eckstein, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway (1966). Constitutionalism in the European Community is discussed in Vernon Bogdanor (ed.), Constitutions in Democratic Politics (1988), on the European Community. The impact of American constitutionalism upon other nations is the topic of George Athan Billias (ed.), American Constitutionalism Abroad: Selected Essays in Comparative Constitutional History (1990).Studies of constitutional development include Herbert J. Spiro (ed.), Patterns of African Development: Five Comparisons (1967); B.O. Nwabueze, Constitutionalism in the Emergent States (1973); Lawrence Ward Beer (ed.), Constitutionalism in Asia: Asian Views of the American Influence (1979); and William B. Simons (ed.), The Constitutions of the Communist World (1980), still of historical interest. The potential role of constitutions in resolving societal conflict is considered in Albert P. Blaustein and Dana Blaustein Epstein, Resolving Language Conflicts: A Study of the World's Constitutions (1986). Douglas Greenberg et al. (eds.), Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World: The American Council of Learned Societies Comparative Constitutionalism Papers (1993), offers an excellent compilation of studies of constitutionalism after the recent transitions to democracy. Herbert John Spiro The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica