NEGARA SEBAGAI OBJEK ILMU PENGETAHUAN

Negara selalu menjadi pusat perhatian dan objek kajian bersamaan dengan berkembangnya ilmu pengetahuan umat manusia, sehingga banyak cabang ilmu pengetahuan yang menjadikan Negara sebagai objek kajiannya

• Ilmu Politik 
• Ilmu Negara 
• Ilmu Hukum Kenegaraan 
• Ilmu Hukum Administrasi Negara 
• Ilmu Hukum Tata Negara, dan masih banyak lagi yang lainnya.

Istilah Negara yan dikenal sekarang mulai timbul pada zaman rainassance di Eropa pada abad ke-15. Pada masa itu mulai dikenal istilah “Lo Stato” yang berasal dari bahasa Italia, yang kemuduan menjelma menjadi “L’Etat” dalam bahasa Prancis. Selanjutnya “State” dalam bahasa Inggris atau “Staat” dalam bahasa Jerman dan Belanda.

Secara sederhana oleh para sarjana sering diuraikan adanya 4 (empat) unsur dalam setiap Negara, yaitu :

• A definite territor
• A Population
• A Government
• Sovereignity 

Hans Kelsen dalam bukunya “General Theory of Law and State” menguraikan pandangannya tentang Negara atau “state a juristis entity dan state as a politically aiganized society atau state as power”.

Elemen Negara menurut Hans Kelsen mencakup :

• The Territory of the State (seperti mengenai pembentukan dan pembubaran Negara, serta mengenai pengakuan atas Negara dan pemerintahan) 
• Time Element of the State (waktu pembentukan Negara yang bersangkutan) 
• The People of the State (rakyat Negara yang bersangkutan) 
• The competence of the State as the Material Sphere of Validity of the National Legal Order (misalnya yang berkaitan dengan pengakuan internasional) 
• Conflict of Laws (pertentangan antar tata hukum) 
• The so-called Fundamental Rights and Duties of the State (soal jaminan hak dankebabasan hak asasi manusia) 
• The Power of the State (aspek-aspek mengenai kekuasaan Negara)

Untuk mencapai tujuan bersama, maka setiap manusia perlu bernegara, oleh karena Negara itu adalah organisasi kekuasaan daripada manusia-manusia (masyarakat) dan merupakan alat yang akan diperkunakan untuk mencapai tujuan bersama itu. Tiap-tiap Negara menpunyai tujuan :

•  Untuk memperluas kekuasaan semata-mata
• Untuk menyelenggarakan ketertiban hukum 
•  Untuk mencapai kesejahteraan umum.

Tujuan Negara RI ditegaskan dalam Pembukaan UUD Negara Republik Indonesia Tahun 1945 : “Untuk memajukan kesejahteraan umum, mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa, dan ikut melaksanakan ketertiban dunia yang berdasarkan kemerdekaan, perdamaian abadi dan keadilan sosial”. (Negara Kesejahteraan).

Constitutionalism

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.