Most Constitutions Die Young
Here is the statistic nobody expects: the historical life expectancy of a written constitution since 1789 is approximately 19 years. These documents are usually written to last forever, and usually do not.
A constitution, or supreme law, is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that form the legal basis of a polity, an organisation or another kind of entity, and it commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
Within a state, it defines the principles the state rests on, how laws are made, and who makes them. Many, especially codified ones, also work as limiters of state power, drawing lines a government's rulers cannot cross, such as fundamental rights. Changing one usually requires consensus or a supermajority, which is precisely what makes the 19-year average so striking.
The Longest, the Shortest, the Oldest
The records here are wildly spread apart. The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution of any country in the world, at 146,385 words in its English-language version. The Constitution of Monaco is the shortest, at 3,814 words. One is nearly forty times the other.
Age is contested. The constitution of San Marino might be the world's oldest active written constitution, since some of its core documents have been in operation since 1600. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest active codified constitution, meaning the oldest contained in a single comprehensive document.
The varieties are broader than most people assume. Alongside liberal constitutions there are absolutist constitutions, Islamic constitutions and communist state constitutions, all doing the same structural job under very different philosophies.
The Constitution You Cannot Hold
The United Kingdom is the famous example of an uncodified constitution. It genuinely has one, but there is no single document to point at.
Instead it is written across numerous fundamental acts of a legislature, court cases and treaties. A written constitution simply means the principles are set down in a document or set of documents. A codified constitution means they are gathered into one comprehensive text. The UK has the former without the latter.
The word itself arrived through French from the Latin *constitutio*, used for regulations and orders such as imperial enactments. It was later widely used in canon law for an important determination, particularly a decree issued by the Pope, still called an apostolic constitution today.
Within Power, Beyond Power
Constitutional law runs on one deceptively simple test. Actions by officials that fall within their constitutional or statutory authority are termed "within power", in Latin intra vires. Actions that do not are "beyond power", ultra vires.
A students' union barred from acting outside student affairs is a small example: if it wades into unrelated activity, that is ultra vires of its charter and nobody is bound by it. A provincial parliament trying to legislate in an area the constitution reserves for the federal parliament is the same problem at national scale.
When an official act is unconstitutional, it is null and void, and crucially the nullification runs ab initio, from inception rather than from the date of the finding. It was never law at all. Sometimes the statute is fine but one particular application of it is not, and only that application is struck down.
Not Just for Countries
It is easy to assume constitutions belong to nations alone. They do not. Constitutions concern organisations at every level, from sovereign countries down to companies and unincorporated associations.
A treaty that establishes an international organisation is also that organisation's constitution, because it defines how the body is constituted. Every modern written constitution confers specific powers on an entity, on the primary condition that the entity abides by the constitution's limitations.
As the economist Scott Gordon put it, a political organisation is constitutional to the extent that it contains institutionalised mechanisms of power control that protect the interests and liberties of citizens, including those who may be in the minority. Scholars still argue over whether legitimacy should rest on the consent of the governed or on reason, and whether a constitution must grow out of a nation's own spirit. Hegel thought it took centuries.
