1. What a constitution is

Two meanings

The narrow meaning: A constitution is a document with special legal status. It sets out the framework and the main functions of the organs of government, and the principles by which they must work. Sierra Leone, the United States and India have constitutions of this kind.

The wide meaning: The word also means the whole system of government of a country: the written rules, the statutes, the court decisions and the customs that together decide who governs and how. In 1733 Lord Bolingbroke described a constitution as the assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, drawn from fixed principles of reason, by which the community has agreed to be governed.

The wide meaning includes the narrow one. In Sierra Leone the written Constitution sits at the centre, but it does not work alone. Practices and conventions grow up around any written text and adjust it to changing conditions. A written document has only as much force as the people in power are willing to give it.

What a constitution settles

The organs of the state: It names the Head of State, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, and settles their make-up, powers and relations.

The ruler and the ruled: Every constitutional question is, in the end, about laws that identify the rulers, define the nature and extent of their power, and set the conditions for using it.

Rights: Modern constitutions also protect the rights of the individual against the state. Chapter III of the 1991 Constitution does this.

Supremacy of the written text

Supreme law: Under section 171(15) the Constitution is the supreme law of Sierra Leone. Any other law that is inconsistent with it is void to the extent of the inconsistency.

A court to enforce it: Where a constitution has overriding force, a court must be able to interpret it and strike down acts that conflict with it. In Sierra Leone that is the Supreme Court, under section 124.

Every state has a constitution in the wide sense, because every state runs on some basic rules. A people can also deliberately choose and adopt a constitution for themselves. Sierra Leone has done this several times, as the next chapter shows.