Constitution and Constitutionalism

Now, I am officially reactivating my first blog after I left it behind for a while. I made a decision to reactivate this blog by writing one entry regarding legal matter. Plus, my final exam is just round a corner. I am thinking, by writing something legal matter, it will help me to remember what I had learn in this 4 months.

As far as I concern, each country in this world must have its own constitutional law. When talking about constitutional law, two important things involve namely constitution and constitutionalism. So what the differences between these two things.

Constitution according to A.V. Dicey is "all rules which directly or indirectly affected the distribution of the sovereign power in the state make up the Constitution of the State". However there are also another definitons given by another legal experts. Simply said, a constitution lays down the most important rules that describe the organs of the State - their organization and form of administration, their composition, functions, powers, limit and mutual relationship which is the relationship between the government and citizens, it also mentions the fundamental liberties of citizens and the procedure to amend the constitution.

While constitutionalism is a number of universal doctrine whose purpose is to ensure the governmental powersare limited and the adherence of these doctrines ensure the good governance and the workability of the Constitution. The doctrines namely Rule of Law, Separation of Power and Responsible Government.

The point is, the constitution is the law itself but constitutionalism is the notion. Some countries successfully adapt the notion in their law but some are less succeed.