Definition-and-the-meaning-constitution

CI

Many of us have at one time or the other, hear of constitutions. Some of us hear this word nearly every day, the press always write something about one constitution or the other, sometime a country wants to change its constitution. Only recently some people were given the assignment to write a new constitution, perhaps the most popular constitution in the world is the British constitution of which we hear so much, thus the word “constitution” is on everybody lips we know the meaning of constitution but some of us cannot define it. The best thing we must do before defining constitution is first to explain what it is, and after our explanation of its meaning we shall be in a better position to give it a definition.

Table of content: A

1. The various types of constitutions
2. The second FESTEC events in Nigeria
3. lyttletons constitution and its provisions
4. The Clifford constitution of 1922 -The history and development of the Nigerian constitution council of 1914
5. second FESTAC on Africa and the black world-The impact Limitation and effect
6. Richards constitution of 1946-The features merit and demerit
7. Macpherson constitution of 1951-The features Merit and demerit
8. criticism of Clifford constitution of 1922-The features advantage and disadvantages
9. Definition-and-the-meaning-constitution
10. MacPherson constitution of 1951, major provision and The defect

If any group of people gather and they want to do anything in common they must have a rules, they must know how to share the work among themselves so that each person in the gathering knows his on duty among the people, for instance, the student union must select their president, treasurer, secretary and other officers, they must set up various committee which will carry out the work for them at first before reporting to the whole student, union. Similarly, if a trade union wants to function properly, the trade union must organize itself into various branches with properly elected officers. The power of the offices must be clearly set down in the rules, the time of meeting and the penalty for absence from meting must be embodied in the rules.

The body of rules which set down the organs through which the trade union will function, and which also set down what power and functions would be given to each organ is called the constitution.

If we apply this definition to the state we can say that a constitution is the body of rule which create the organs of government and set down the powers and function of each of the organs of government, it is the constitution which create parliament, prime minister, council of ministers, house of lords, the senate, house of representative, the congress and all other institution of government. Usually, all the people of a country or their representative gather together and write down a document in the form of a book in which are written the name of the various institution and their power and functions, in some countries they have not bothered to write down their own constitution, they just know it my mere understanding, it is wrong to say that a constitutions is a document since there are some countries which have not written their own constitution down in any document. The definition we need must embrace all constitutions, whether they are written down or not.

Definition of constitution

a constitution is a body of rules, which may or may not be written down, which create the various organs of government and allocates to those organs their various power and functions.


The definition give above is not the only definition of constitution, anybody can define constitution as he likes, but some definitions are not good enough, some definition try to say that a constitution is a document, but not all constitution are writing down as a document.