A summary of global constitutions

I don’t think it’s technically possible for a country, whether democratic or otherwise, to have no constitution. Wikipedia defines a constitution as “a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is.” To be organized and stable enough to even be called a county means that you must have at least some form of constitution.

The constitution of the United Kingdom exists, it just happened to evolve slowly over a period of centuries instead of being drafted, complete, all at once. They call it “unwritten” because it’s never been compiled and enshrined in a single, overarching document - but that doesn’t mean they’re just making it up as they go. It’s written, it’s just that it’s built out of many documents: acts of legislation, court rulings, treaties, and so forth, going back all the way to magna carta.

The UK is unusual in this way only because it is one of the only countries that, even after dynastic changes, violent overthrow, several civil wars, and changes in government (it was a republic for awhile in the 1650s) it managed to hold on to its essential identity. In most countries when these things happened the stuff from before the revolution was just tossed in the burning barrrel, so it’s ignored today, but the UK still considers legislation passed almost a thousand years ago to be as valid as ever — at least the parts that haven’t been updated or explicitly altered by legislation since then. Most democracies that follow the Westminster system, like Australia or New Zealand, likewise don’t have written constitutions. Canada is the exception, largely thanks to the American influence, having codefied most of ours and left very little to convention. When I see a question like yours I wonder if what you’re asking is how many democracies have a constitutional bill of rights. The answer is not that many, but more and more countries seem to realize the wisdom of this as time goes on.

Many countries have a legislative of bill of rights, like the UK, but the obvious flaw with legislation as a rights insrument is that it is only valid until the legislature decides to change it. The power of a constitutional bill of rights is exactly that the government can’t simply overrule it whenever the mood strikes it, and it’s one of the greatest contributions of the United States to the world. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is unmistakeably patterned after the United States Bill of Rights, and was enshrined in our constitution when we patriated ours in 1982 (weird to think that the NES was already in prototype before Canada became a sovereign nation ) and it’s probably the most significant difference between Canada and other commonwealth countries. In the UK and other westminster-style countries the rule is parliamentary supremacy, but a constitutional bill of rights means that there are some lines that parliament can’t cross. It also increased the power of the judiciary, which must often decide whether a law is constitutional or not, and maybe overturn it (which doesn’t happen in most countries).

The USA’s been at it for a while, and I’m not sure that we fully appreciated how significantly the Supreme Court would come to influence lawmaking. The cases in the states that get a lot of attention are often subtle and sort of generational, in the sense of a behavior that gradually over the years comes to be seen as crossing the line. When it’s all brand new, though, nobody really knows where the lines exactly are until it goes to the Supreme Court, so things need to be challenged before they can really come into focus. The US dealt with all those fundamentals a long time ago. At any rate, Canada is a very young country, and because everything’s so new they get to emulate the best qualities of the UK and the USA but also to learn from their mistakes.

A constitutional bill of rights is definitely something that the USA got right, and if you’re living in a country that doesn’t have one there are fewer and flimsier protections in place than you think, because at any moment, if it thinks it should, your government can choose to suspend your rights temporarily or even permanently, and that should give you pause for thought.

(Note: the Prime Minister who patriated Canada’s constitution and enshrined the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and while there are some who hate him still for other things he did, that achievement will always be one of the greatest of any Canadian PM. The current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is his son.)

By the way, Australia is I think the only democracy in existence that has neither a legislative nor a constitutional bill of rights. I’ve mentioned this to Australians before, suggested that they should probably be worried about that, but they don’t see it. I hope they won’t have to find out why that’s a bad situation.