Constitutionalism
Constitutionalism is "a compound of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law".
[1] Political organizations are constitutional to the extent that they "contain institutionalized mechanisms of power control for the protection of the interests and liberties of the citizenry, including those that may be in the minority".
[4] One example of constitutionalism's descriptive use is law professor Bernard Schwartz's five volume compilation of sources seeking to trace the origins of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
[5] Beginning with English antecedents going back to Magna Carta (1215), Schwartz explores the presence and development of ideas of individual freedoms and privileges through colonial charters and legal understandings.
The "essential distinction" between the two concepts was that the law of the constitution was made up of "rules enforced or recognised by the Courts", making up "a body of 'laws' in the proper sense of that term."
William H. Hamilton has captured this dual aspect by noting that constitutionalism "is the name given to the trust which men repose in the power of words engrossed on parchment to keep a government in order.
However, several commentators and reformers have argued for a new British Bill of Rights to provide liberty, democracy and the rule of law with more effective constitutional protection.
Constitutionalism of the United States has been defined as a complex of ideas, attitudes and patterns elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from the people, and is limited by a body of fundamental law.
These ideas, attitudes and patterns, according to one analyst, derive from "a dynamic political and historical process rather than from a static body of thought laid down in the eighteenth century".
[32] Two notable Chief Justices of the United States who played an important role in the development of American constitutionalism are John Marshall and Earl Warren.
John Marshall, the 4th Chief Justice, upheld the principle of judicial review in the 1803 landmark case Marbury v. Madison, whereby Supreme Court could strike down federal and state laws if they conflicted with the Constitution.
[33][34] By establishing the principle of judicial review, Marshall Court helped implement the ideology of separation of powers and cement the position of the American judiciary as an independent and co-equal branch of government.
[42] Since May 3, 1947, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
[43] From the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth utilized the liberum veto, a form of unanimity voting rule, in its parliamentary deliberations.
The Constitution introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility (szlachta) and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom.
[citation needed] After the democratically elected government of president Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic was deposed, the Constitutionalist movement was born in the country.
Influential thinkers like Mohammad Hashim Kamali[47] and Khaled Abou El Fadl,[48] but also younger ones like Asifa Quraishi[49] and Nadirsyah Hosen[50] combine classic Islamic law with modern constitutionalism.
