CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. In general, that branch of public law which deals with the nature and organization of government, the dis tribution and mode of exercising the sovereign powers of the State, and the relations of the Gov ernment to those who are subject to its authority. It has nothing to do with the regulation of the external relations of a State with other States, these being governed by international law, though the agencies for maintaining those relations, and the determination of their character and form. may be included within the constitutional law of the State. Thus, the choice of amhassadors, as well as their rank and functions, being the direct concern of the State they are chosen to represent, is governed by its constitutional law, and so, in the United States, is the power exercised by the Senate in approving. amending, or rejecting trea ties with foreign powers.
Again, where the States are not related to one another as independent political communities, but sustain a relation of superior and dependent States, as of a colony to the parent State, or a subject to a dominant State, or of a member of a federation of tates to the central authority, such relations are matters not of international, but of constitutional law. Thus, the Acts of Union of England with Scotland and Ireland, the acts of the British Parliament incorporating the Domin ion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Aus tralia, the various acts of Congress providing for the government of Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the several Territories of the United States, the pro visions of the American Constituthm determining the relations between the General Government and the individual States—all these are as much a part of the constitutional law of the States affected by them as are their Bills of Rights, or the laws and customs determining the powers of their respective legislatures.
On the other hand, two political communities may be for some purposes constitutionally related and may yet in some respects remain foreign to one another. Thus, while the relations of the several States of the American Commonwealth to the central authority, and, through that author ity to one another, are governed by their constitu tional law, they are yet for many purposes inde pendent of one another, and, in so far as they are independent, their relations are matters of inter national and not of constitutional law.
Specifically, the constitutional law of a State consists of its Constitution, or so much of it as is legally effective, together with the construc tions and interpretations which it has received at the hands of the courts or other competent authority.