Constitutionalism has a variety of meanings. Most generally, it
is "a complex 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".
A political organization is constitutional to the extent that it "contain[s] institutionalized mechanisms of power control for the protection of the interests and liberties of the citizenry, including those that may be in the minority" As described by political scientist and constitutional scholar David Fellman:
Constitutionalism is descriptive of a complicated concept, deeply
imbedded in historical experience, which subjects the officials who
exercise governmental powers to the limitations of a higher law.
Constitutionalism proclaims the desirability of the rule of law as
opposed to rule by the arbitrary judgment or mere fiat of public
officials…. Throughout the literature dealing with modern public law and
the foundations of statecraft the central element of the concept of
constitutionalism is that in political society
government officials are not free to do anything they please in any
manner they choose; they are bound to observe both the limitations on
power and the procedures which are set out in the supreme, constitutional law
of the community. It may therefore be said that the touchstone of
constitutionalism is the concept of limited government under a higher
law.
United States
American constitutionalism has been defined as a complex of ideas,
attitudes, and patterns of behavior 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 of
behavior, 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".
In U.S. history, constitutionalism—in both its descriptive and
prescriptive sense—has traditionally focused on the federal
Constitution. Indeed, a routine assumption of many scholars has been
that understanding "American constitutionalism" necessarily entails the
thought that went into the drafting of the federal Constitution and the
American experience with that constitution since its ratification in
1789.
There is a rich tradition of state constitutionalism that offers broader insight into constitutionalism in the United States.
While state constitutions and the federal Constitution operate
differently as a function of federalism—the coexistence and interplay of
governments at both a national and state level—they all rest on a
shared assumption that their legitimacy comes from the sovereign
authority of the people or Popular sovereignty.
This underlying premise—embraced by the American revolutionaries with
the Declaration of Independence—unites the American constitutional
tradition.
Both the experience with state constitutions before—and after—the
federal Constitution as well as the emergence and operation of the
federal Constitution reflect an on-going struggle over the idea that all
governments in America rested on the sovereignty of the people for
their legitimacy.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is perhaps the best instance of constitutionalism in a country that has an uncodified constitution. A variety of developments in seventeenth-century England, including "the protracted struggle for power between king and Parliament was accompanied by an efflorescence of political ideas in which the concept of countervailing powers was clearly defined," led to a well-developed polity with multiple governmental and private institutions that counter the power of the state.
