CONSTITUTION. The fundamental law of a state, directing the principles upon which the government is founded, and regu lating the exercise of the sovereign powers, directing to what bodies or persons those powers shall be confided and the manner of their exercise.
An established form of government; a system of laws and customs.
Constitution, in the former law of the European continent, signified as much as decree,—a decree of importance, especially ecclesiastical decrees. The decrees of the Roman emperors referring to the jus circa sacra, contained in the code of Justinian, have been repeatedly collected and called the Con stitutions. The famous bull Unigenitus was usually called in Francs the Constitution. Comprehensive laws or decrees have been called constitutions; thus the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, which is the penal cods decreed by Charles V. for Germaoy, the Constitutions of Clarendon (q. v.). In political law the word constitution came to he used more and more for the fundamentals of a government,—the laws and usages which give it its characteristic fea ture. We find, thus, former English writers speak of the constitution of the Turkish empire. These fundamental laws and customs appeared to our race especially important where they limited the power and action of the different branches of gov ernment; and it cams thus to pass that by consti tution was meant especially the fundamental law of a state in which the citizen enjoys a high degree of civil liberty ; and, as it is equally necessary to guard against the power of the executive in mon archies, a period arrived—namely, the first half of the present century—when in Europe, and especially on the continent, the term constitutional government came to be used in contradistinction to absolutism. We now mean by the term constitution, in com mon parlance, the fundamental law of a fres coun try, which characterizes the organism of the win try and secures the rights of the citizen andfcleter mines his main duties as a freeman. Sometimes, indeed, the word constitution has been used is recent times for what otherwise is generally called an organic law. Napoleon I. styled himself Emperor of the French by the Grace of God and the Consti tutions of the Empire.
Constitutions were generally divided into written and non-written constitutions, analogous to leges scriptce and non scriptce. These terms do not in dicate the distinguishing principle; Lieber, there foh, divides political constitutions into accumulated or cumulative constitutions and enacted constitu tions. The constitution of ancient Rome and that of England belong to the first class. Ths latter consists of the customs, statutes, common laws, and decisions of fundamental importance. The Re form act is considered by the English a portion of the constitution as much as the trial by jury or the representative system, which have never been enacted, but correspond to what Cicero calla leges natce.
Constitutional law in England appears to include all rules which directly or indirectly affect the distribution or the exercise of the sovereign power in the state; all rules which define the members of the sovereign power and their relation to each other and the mode in which it, or the members thereof, exercise their authority, the order of succes sion to the throne, the prerogations of the chief magistrate and the form of the legis lature and its mode of election, ministers with their responsibilities and sphere of ac tion, the territory over which the sovereign ty of the state extends, and who are to be deemed citizens and subjects. , Dicey, Coast. 22.
Our constitutions are enacted ; that is to say, they were, on a certain day and by a certain au thority, enacted as a fundamental law of the body politic. In many cases enacted constitutions can not be dispensed with, and they have certain ad ' vantages which cumulative constitutions must fore go ; while the latter have some advantages which the former cannot obtain. It has been thought, in many periods, by modern nations, that enacted con stitutions and statutory law alone are firm guar antees of rights and liberties. This error has been exposed in Lieber's Civil Liberty. Nor can enacted constitutions dispense with the "grown law" (lex nata). For the meaning of much that an enacted constitution establishes can only be found by ,,,the grown law on which it is founded, just as the Brit ish Bill of Rights (an enacted portion of the Eng lish constitution) rests on the common law. Enacted constitutions may be either octroyed, that is, granted by the presumed full authority of the grantor, the monarch ; or they may be enacted by a sovereign people prescribing high rules of ac tion and fundamental laws for its political society, such as ours is ; or tbey may rest on contracts be tween contracting parties,—for Instance, between the people and a dynasty, or between several states. We cannot enter here into the interesting inquiry concerning the points on which all modern constitu tions agree, and regarding which they differ,—one of the most instructive inquiries for the publicist and jurist. See Hallam's Constitutional History of England ; Hare ; Miller ;' Rawle; Story; Tucker ; Watson ; Willoughby ; Stimson; Sutherland; Flan ders ; Guthrie ; Foster; Boutwell ; Tiedeman (the Unwritten Constitution) ; Taylor ; Thayer, on the Constitution; Farrand, Records of the Federal Con vention; Sheppard's Constitutional Text-Book: El liot's Debates on the Constitution, etc. ; Lieber's ar ticle (Constitution), in the Encyclopmdia Americana ; Cooley, Cond. Lim. ; Bryce, Am. Com.; Von Hoist, Hist. U. S.