ABSTRACT
The growing influence of the Constitution is attributable to many factors but, whatever the causes, the effect has been to expand remarkably the power of constitutional courts. All states are constituted, but not all have a Constitution. The distinction is significant. Dieter Grimm explains it by stating that constitution in the former sense ‘refers to the nature of a country with reference to its political conditions’, whereas in the latter it is ‘a law that concerns itself with the establishment and exercise of political rule’. The Constitution, by contrast, is a text that is drafted and adopted within the state at a particular moment in its development. The Constitution acquires its normative authority in part through the coherence of the governmental scheme it establishes and in part by virtue of the process by which, through an exercise of the people’s constituent power, the Constitution is drafted and ratified.
