CONSTITUTION AND CONSTITUTIONALISM 375
INTRODUCTION
The Nature and scope of Constitutional Law
In the pages that follow I have not reproduced the text of the Articles of the Constitution. Such a thing would have been in my judgment useless and unhelpful to the student who wants to have an overall idea of the provisions of the Constitution and the principles underlying it. What I have done is to select certain heads and assemble thereunder for discussion and exposition articles of the Constitution relevant to such heads. What those heads are will be clear from the Table of Contents. This is an analytical study of the Constitution which aims to give an objective picture of the Constitution and to set it in contrast with the provisions of the constitutions of other countries.
It is not unlikely that a reader may ask on what basis I have selected the heads for discussion. My answer is that these are the topics which are generally held to fall within the scope of Constitutional Law. This answer, however, raises other questions. What is meant by a Constitution ? What is the nature and scope of Constitutional Law ? Some explanation of the subject is, therefore, inevitable. It must, however, be very brief.
What is meant by the term Constitution ? The word constitution in its legal connotation means the act of establishing or of ordaining or the ordinance or regulation so established. According to Prof. Mc II wain :—
“In the Roman Empire the word in its Latin form became the technical term for acts of legislation by the emperor, and from Roman Law the Church borrowed it and applied it to ecclesiastical regulations for the whole Church or some particular ecclesiastical province. From the Church, or possibly from the Roman law-books themselves, the term came back into use in the later middle ages as applicable to secular enactments of the time.”