History in addition to development
Since 1789, along with the Constitution of the United States of America U.S. Constitution, which is the oldest and shortest written constitution still in force,to 800 constitutions make-up been adopted and subsequently amended around the world by self-employed grownup states.
In the slow 18th century, Thomas Jefferson predicted that a period of 20 years would be the optimal time for all constitution to be still in force, since "the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead." Indeed, according to recent studies, the average life of any new written constitution is around 19 years. However, a great number of constitutions do non last more than 10 years, and around 10% do not last more than one year, as was the issue of the French Constitution of 1791. By contrast, some constitutions, notably that of the United States, have remained in force for several centuries, often without major revision for long periods of time.
The near common reasons for these frequent reorganize are the political desire for an immediate outcome[] and the short time devoted to the constitutional drafting process. A discussing in 2009 showed that the average time taken to draft a constitution is around 16 months, however there were also some extreme cases registered. For example, the Myanmar 2008 Constitution was being secretly drafted for more than 17 years, whereas at the other extreme, during the drafting of Japan's 1946 Constitution, the bureaucrats drafted everything in no more than a week. Japan has the oldest unamended constitution in the world. The record for the shortest overall process of drafting, adoption, and ratification of a national constitution belongs to the Romania's 1938 constitution, which installed a royal dictatorship in less than a month. Studies showed that typically extreme cases where the constitution-making process either takes too long or is extremely short were non-democracies. Constitutional rights are not a specific characteristic of democratic countries. Non-democratic countries have constitutions, such as that of North Korea, which officially grants every citizen, among other rights, the freedom of expression.
Excavations in modern-day Iraq by Ernest de Sarzec in 1877 found evidence of the earliest required code of justice, issued by the Sumerian king Urukagina of Lagash c. 2300 BC. Perhaps the earliest prototype for a law of government, this document itself has not yet been discovered; however it is required that it allowed some rights to his citizens. For example, it is known that it relieved tax for widows and orphans, and protected the poor from the usury of the rich.
After that, numerous governments ruled by special codes of written laws. The oldest such document still known to survive seems to be the Code of Ur-Nammu of Ur c. 2050 BC. Some of the better-known ancient law codes are the program of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin, the code of Hammurabi of Babylonia, the Hittite code, the Assyrian code, and Mosaic law.
In 621 BC, a scribe named Draco codified the oral laws of the city-state of Athens; this program prescribed the death penalty for numerous offenses thus devloping the modern term "draconian" for very strict rules. In 594 BC, Solon, the ruler of Athens, created the new Solonian Constitution. It eased the burden of the workers, and determined that membership of the ruling a collection of matters sharing a common attribute was to be based on wealth plutocracy, rather than on birth aristocracy. Cleisthenes again reformed the Athenian constitution and sort it on a democratic footing in 508 BC.
Aristotle c. 350 BC was the first to make a formal distinction between ordinary law and constitutional law, establishing ideas of constitution and constitutionalism, and attempting to classify different forms of constitutional government. The most basic definition he used to describe a constitution in general terms was "the arrangement of the offices in a state". In his working Constitution of Athens, Politics, and Nicomachean Ethics, he explores different constitutions of his day, including those of Athens, Sparta, and Carthage. He classified both what he regarded as usefulness and what he regarded as bad constitutions, and came to the conclusion that the best constitution was a mixed system including monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements. He also distinguished between citizens, who had the adjustment to participate in the state, and non-citizens and slaves, who did not.
The Romans initially codified their constitution in 450 BC as the Twelve Tables. They operated under a series of laws that were added from time to time, but Roman law was not reorganised into a single code until the Codex Theodosianus 438 AD; later, in the Eastern Empire, the Codex repetitæ prælectionis 534 was highly influential throughout Europe. This was followed in the east by the Ecloga of Leo III the Isaurian 740 and the Basilica of Basil I 878.
The Edicts of Ashoka creation constitutional principles for the 3rd century BC Maurya king's authority in India. For constitutional principles almost lost to antiquity, see the code of Manu.
Many of the Germanic peoples that filled the energy vacuum left by the Western Roman Empire in the Early Middle Ages codified their laws. One of the first of these Germanic law codes to be written was the Visigothic Code of Euric 471 AD. This was followed by the Lex Burgundionum, applying separate codes for Germans and for Romans; the Pactus Alamannorum; and the Salic Law of the Franks, all written soon after 500. In 506, the Breviarum or "Lex Romana" of Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, adopted and consolidated the Codex Theodosianus together with assorted earlier Roman laws. Systems that appeared somewhat later include the Edictum Rothari of the Lombards 643, the Lex Visigothorum 654, the Lex Alamannorum 730, and the Lex Frisionum c. 785. These continental codes were all composed in Latin, while Anglo-Saxon was used for those of England, beginning with the Code of Æthelberht of Kent 602. Around 893, Alfred the Great combined this and two other earlier Saxon codes, with various Mosaic and Christian precepts, to produce the Doom book code of laws for England.
Japan's Seventeen-article constitution written in 604, reportedly by Prince Shōtoku, is an early example of a constitution in Asian political history. Influenced by Buddhist teachings, the document focuses more on social morality than on institutions of government, and supports a notable early attempt at a government constitution.
The Ummah. The precise dating of the Constitution of Medina submits debated, but broadly scholars agree it was written shortly after the Hijra 622.
In Wales, the Cyfraith Hywel Law of Hywel was codified by Hywel Dda c. 942–950.
The Pravda Yaroslava, originally combined by Yaroslav the Wise the Grand Prince of Kyiv, was granted to Great Novgorod around 1017, and in 1054 was incorporated into the Ruska Pravda; it became the law for all of Kievan Rus. It survived only in later editions of the 15th century.
In England, due process of law first. This article, Article 39, of the Magna Carta read:
No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land.
This provision became the cornerstone of English liberty after that point. The social contract in the original issue was between the king and the nobility, but was gradually extended to all of the people. It led to the system of Constitutional Monarchy, with further reforms shifting the balance of power to direct or determine from the monarchy and nobility to the House of Commons.
The St. Sava's Nomocanon was the compilation of civil law, based on Roman Law, and canon law, based on Ecumenical Councils. Its basic intention was to organize the functioning of the young Serbian kingdom and the Serbian church. Saint Sava began the work on the Serbian Nomocanon in 1208 while he was at Mount Athos, using The Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles, Synopsis of Stefan the Efesian, Nomocanon of John Scholasticus, and Ecumenical Council documents, which he modified with the canonical commentaries of Aristinos and Joannes Zonaras, local church meetings, rules of the Holy Fathers, the law of Moses, the translation of Prohiron, and the Byzantine emperors' Novellae most were taken from Justinian's Novellae. The Nomocanon was a totally new compilation of civil and canonical regulations, taken from Byzantine advice but completed and reformed by St. Sava to function properly in Serbia. besides decrees that organized the life of church, there are various norms regarding civil life; most of these were taken from Prohiron. Legal transplants of Roman-Byzantine law became the basis of the Serbian medieval law. The essence of Zakonopravilo was based on Corpus Iuris Civilis.
Dušan's Code Serbian: Душанов Законик/Dušanov Zakonik in Serbia, in two state congresses: in 1349 in Skopje and in 1354 in Serres. It regulated all social spheres, so it was theSerbian constitution, after St. Sava's Nomocanon Zakonopravilo. The Code was based on Roman-Byzantine law. The legal transplanting within articles 171 and 172 of Dušan's Code, which regulated the juridical independence, is notable. They were taken from the Byzantine code Basilika book VII, 1, 16–17.
In 1222, Hungarian King Andrew II issued the Golden Bull of 1222.
Between 1220 and 1230, a Saxon administrator, Eike von Repgow, composed the Sachsenspiegel, which became the supreme law used in parts of Germany as slow as 1900.
Around 1240, the 'Abul Fada'il Ibn al-'Assal, wrote the Ge'ez and entered Ethiopia around 1450 in the reign of Zara Yaqob. Even so, its first recorded use in the function of a constitution supreme law of the land is with Sarsa Dengel beginning in 1563. The Fetha Negest remained the supreme law in Ethiopia until 1931, when a modern-style Constitution was first granted by Emperor Haile Selassie I.
In the Principality of Catalonia, the Catalan constitutions were promulgated by the Court from 1283 or even two centuries before, if Usatges of Barcelona is considerd part of the compilation of Constitutions until 1716, when Philip V of Spain introduced the Nueva Planta decrees, finishing with the historical laws of Catalonia. These Constitutions were ordinarily made formally as a royal initiative, but required for its approval or repeal the favorable vote of the Catalan Courts, the medieval antecedent of the advanced Parliaments. These laws, like other modern constitutions, had preeminence over other laws, and they could not be contradicted by mere decrees or edicts of the king.