Abstract
Law is a text-based practice, a practice of creating and applying legally authoritative texts. A practice is defined as a set of social practice rules, rules implicit in some form of established social activity. National law is made and applied by social institutions such as legislatures and courts and administrative agencies by which a society governs itself. Constitutional law is that body of law that constitutes a nation state, primarily by allocating fundamental legal powers. These may be, but need not be, codified in a written document. Even when they are codified, they are supplemented by unwritten law consisting of institutional practices of interpretation and application including constitutional conventions.
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Notes
- 1.
Stepnen R. Munzer and James W. Nickel, “Does the Constitution Mean What It Always Meant?” 77 Columbia Law Review (1977), pp. 1029–1062.
- 2.
John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” Philosophical Review, vol. 64 (1955), p. 3, Note 1.
- 3.
Carl Wellman, Real Rights, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 48–50.
- 4.
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Second Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, p. 255.
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Wellman, C. (2016). Constitutional Law. In: Constitutional Rights -What They Are and What They Ought to Be. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 115. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31526-3_1
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