Constitution of a country lays down the basic structure of the political system under which its people are to be governed. It establishes the main organs of the State-the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, defines their powers demarcates their responsibilities and regulates their relationships with each other and with the people.
In a democracy, sovereignty vests in the people and ideally the people govern themselves. But, with the growing complexities of administration and the size of the nation-states, direct democracy is no more feasible. In the modern representative democracies, people exercise their inalienable right to decide how and by whom they should be governed. The very first and the most fundamental application j of their sovereignty by the people is in giving to themselves a constitution which outlines the ground rules under which certain powers are transferred to different organs of the state and are to be exercised by the them.
In a federal polity, constitution, inter alia, delineates, delimits and distributes powers between the organs of the state at federal or union level on the one hand and those at the level of the states, provinces or the units on the other.
The Constitution of a country may also be described as its fundamental law which ordains the fundamentals of its polity and on the altar of which all other laws and executive acts of the state are to be tested for their validity and legitimacy.
Every constitution represents the vision and values of its founding father and is based on the social, political and economic ethos and faith and aspirations of the people.
It is wrong to regard a country's constitution as a mere inert document. For, constitution if not only what is written in the text of the constitution. Constitution is a living organism of functioning institutions. It keeps constantly growing, evolving. Every constitution gets meaning and content only from the manner in which and the people by whom it is operated, the effects it acquires from how it is interpreted by courts of the land and the conventions and practices that grow around it in the actual process of its working.
In a democracy, sovereignty vests in the people and ideally the people govern themselves. But, with the growing complexities of administration and the size of the nation-states, direct democracy is no more feasible. In the modern representative democracies, people exercise their inalienable right to decide how and by whom they should be governed. The very first and the most fundamental application j of their sovereignty by the people is in giving to themselves a constitution which outlines the ground rules under which certain powers are transferred to different organs of the state and are to be exercised by the them.
In a federal polity, constitution, inter alia, delineates, delimits and distributes powers between the organs of the state at federal or union level on the one hand and those at the level of the states, provinces or the units on the other.
The Constitution of a country may also be described as its fundamental law which ordains the fundamentals of its polity and on the altar of which all other laws and executive acts of the state are to be tested for their validity and legitimacy.
Every constitution represents the vision and values of its founding father and is based on the social, political and economic ethos and faith and aspirations of the people.
It is wrong to regard a country's constitution as a mere inert document. For, constitution if not only what is written in the text of the constitution. Constitution is a living organism of functioning institutions. It keeps constantly growing, evolving. Every constitution gets meaning and content only from the manner in which and the people by whom it is operated, the effects it acquires from how it is interpreted by courts of the land and the conventions and practices that grow around it in the actual process of its working.
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