General Tendencies in State Constitutions

Extract

Throughout classical and medieval philosophizing runs a theory of a paramount or fundamental law, permanent in kind, because fixed in nature. This theory in its modern form, after voicing itself for a time in the Cromwellian period, came to the front in the American Revolution and found its proper expression in the written constitution. In our federal system, owing to the rigidity of the national Constitution, the development of that document must be traced in the varying decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the Commonwealths a more flexible system of amendment prevails, and for that reason changes in what the States consider to be their fundamental law, may be traced more easily in the constitutions themselves, subject as they are to frequent revision and amendment.

In the Revolutionary period these constitutions were few in number, small in size, and contained a mere framework of governmental organization. Since that time some two hundred State constitutions have been made or revised. The forty-five now in force average in length over fifteen thousand words, the longest, that of Louisiana, having about forty-five thousand. In place of fundamentals only, they are filled with details, so petty in many instances, as hardly worthy even to be dignified as statutory.