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Foreign ConstitutionsApart from the few countries mentioned in the Foreign Experience page all other independent countries have constitutions, and some of them have had a number of constitutions. Some are quite short and others are long. Generally speaking, modern constitutions are longer than old ones. There are several reasons for this. One is that ordinary people are often more involved now in making constitutions and they really want to see their own concerns reflected there. Secondly, governments do much more now than they used to do. Thirdly, when older constitutions were drafted, it was not clear how they would be used - especially by people going to court to enforce the constitution. Now it is clear, at least in some countries, that many disputes will have to be decided by courts. The drafters of the constitution try to make their words clearer - which often means that more details of the intended meaning are included. For these various reasons, the Constitution of South Africa is about 10 times as long as that of the United States. There are also different legal traditions that lead to rather different legal documents. Some countries are more used to laws that are expressed in general terms, and their constitutions also tend to be more general. Other countries have a tradition of being much more detailed in their laws. Nepal fits more into the latter tradition, with India - though Nepal's constitution is not nearly as long as that of India (which is nearly three times as long as that of South Africa!) Constitutions of socialist countries, like China, tend to make statements about what the state does, rather than what the state has a duty to do. There was no expectation on the part of those who drafted the Constitution of the People's Republic of China that citizens would start to take the state to court to enforce the provisions of the Constitution. For some links to the texts of other countries constitutions click here |
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