Reading between the lines: America's implicit Constitution -- Heeding the deed: America's enacted Constitution -- Hearing the people: America's lived Constitution -- Confronting modern case law: America's "warrented" Constitution -- Putting precedent in its place: America's doctrinal Constitution -- Honoring the icons: America's symbolic Constitution -- "Remembering the ladies" : America's feminist Constitution -- Following Washington's lead: America's "Georgian" Constitution -- Interpreting government practices: America's institutional Constitution -- Joining the party: America's partisan Constitution -- Doing the right thing: America's conscientious Constitution -- Envisioning the future: America's unfinished Constitution -- Afterward -- Appendix: America's written Constitution.

Excerpt from The Essentials of a Written Constitution Aristocracy and democracy, in the political sense, it will be noticed, are merely relative terms. There is no exact point at which a community ceases to be aristocratic and becomes democratic, and it is quite obvious that a community may be aristocratic as respects a second and at the same time democratic in relation to a third. France under the Orleans monarchy vested supreme political power in some voters, while under the second empire there were More than one of the states of our Union at the outset had suffrage laws so restrictive in character that they were decidedly aristocratic as compared with their present status, although undoubtedly democratic in comparison even with France under Louis Philippe. An organized political community, independent of external control, is commonly called a state. There is, however, often a confusion of thought arising from the more or less unconscious use of the term state in two different senses. These two applications of the term should be sharply distinguished, and the distinction kept always in mind. In the larger sense the state includes the whole community living in a given terri tory and subject to the political authority of its government. In the limited sense the state includes only that portion of the community which has political authority over the whole, and whose agent in the exercise of that authority is the government. The state in the larger sense we may, for convenience, call the social state. The other may be called the political state. The members of the social state are all subject to law. The political state creates law and enforces it. Political power belongs to the political state, to be sure, for the protection and welfare of the social state. But in the exercise of that power the political state has no legal superior. Its will is law for all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Constitutionalization of world politics is emerging as an unintended consequence of international treaty making driven by the logic of democratic power. The analysis will appeal to scholars of International Relations and International Law interested in international cooperation, as well as institutional and constitutional theory and practice.

In the 225 years since the United States Constitution was first drafted, no single book has addressed the key questions of what constitutions are designed to do, how they are structured, and why they matter. In From Words to Worlds, constitutional scholar Beau Breslin corrects this glaring oversight, singling out the essential functions that a modern, written constitution must incorporate in order to serve as a nation’s fundamental law. Breslin lays out and explains the basic functions of a modern constitution—including creating a new citizenry, structuring the institutions of government, regulating conflict between layers and branches of government, and limiting the power of the sovereign. He also discusses the theoretical concepts behind the fundamentals of written constitutions and examines in depth some of the most important constitutional charters from around the world. In assaying how states put structural ideas into practice, Breslin asks probing questions about why—and if—constitutions matter. Solidly argued and engagingly written, this comparative study in constitutional thought demonstrates clearly the key components that a state’s foundational document must address. Breslin draws a critically important distinction between constitutional texts and constitutional practice.