Cooley, Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations which rest upon the Legislative Power of the States (Boston, any edition). Consult also the historical works referred to under the various titles United States; Great Britain, etc.
CONSTITUTION, The. A forty-four-gun frigate, the most famous vessel in the history of the United Stales Navy, sometimes called ‘Old Ironsides,’ from the hardness of her planking and timbers. She was launched on October 21, 1797, but was not completed and equipped until the following year, when she put to sea under Captain Nicholson for service against the French. During the war with Tripoli, 1801-05 (see Barbary Powers, Wars with), she was Preble's flagship, and in 1805 took part in three of the five bombardments of the port of Tripoli. In July, 1812, in command of Isaac Hull (q.v.), she escaped from a British squadron off the New Jersey coast, after a spirited chase of three days, and on August 10, off Cape Race, fought her famous battle with the Guerrière, Captain Dacres, a somewhat weaker English frigate, which she left a total wreck after an engagement of thirty minutes, the English losing 79 of their crew, the Americans 14. On December 29, under the command of Captain Bainbridge, she captured off Bahia, Brazil, the Java (38 guns, Captain Lambert, after a two hours' engagement, in which the British lost 300 in killed and wounded, the Americans 34. On February 14, 1814, under Captain Stewart, she captured the Picton, 16 guns, and a convoy, in the West Indies; and on February 20, 1815, she took the Cyane, 34 guns, and the Levant, 18 guns, after a fierce engagement—remarkable for the seamanship of the Americans and the gallantry of the English—between the Madeira Islands and Gibraltar. The English lost 19 killed and 42 wounded out of 320; the Americans, 6 killed and 9 wounded out of 451. Soon afterwards the Constitution was closely pursued by a strong British squadron, which recaptured the Levant. Reported unseaworthy between 1828 and 1830, she was ordered to be dismantled, but was retained in deference to the popular sentiment aroused by Holmes's poem “Old Ironsides,” and in 1833 was rebuilt. She went out of commission in 1855 at Portsmouth, N. H., was subsequently used occasionally as a training ship, was again partially rebuilt in 1877, crossed the Atlantic for the last time in 1878, and was stored at the Boston Navy Yard in 1897. Consult: Hollis, The Frigate Constitution (Boston, 1900); and Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812 (New York, 1882).
CONSTITUTION, Chemical. See Chemistry: Carbon Compounds; Stereochemistry.
CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. In general, that branch of public law which deals with the nature and organization of government, the distribution and mode of exercising the sovereign powers of the State, and the relations of the Government to those who are subject to its authority. It has nothing to do with the regulation of the external relations of a State with other States, these being governed by international law, though the agencies for maintaining those relations, and the determination of their character and form, may be included within the constitutional law of the State. Thus, the choice of ambassadors, as well as their rank and functions, being the direct concern of the State they are chosen to represent, is governed by its constitutional law, and so, in the United States, is the power exercised by the Senate in approving, amending, or rejecting treaties with foreign powers.
Again, where the States are not related to one another as independent political communities, but sustain a relation of superior and dependent States, as of a colony to the parent State, or a subject to a dominant State, or of a member of a federation of States to the central authority, such relations are matters not of international, but of constitutional law. Thus, the Acts of Union of England with Scotland and Ireland, the acts of the British Parliament incorporating the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia, the various acts of Congress providing for the government of Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the several Territories of the United States, the provisions of the American Constitution determining the relations between the General Ciovernment and the individual States—all these are as much a part of the constitutional law of the States affected by them as are their Bills of Rights, or the laws and customs determining the powers of their respective legislatures.
On the other hand, two political communities may be for some purposes constitutionally related and may yet in some respects remain foreign to one another. Thus, while the relations of the several States of the American Commonwealth to the central authority, and, through that authority to one another, are governed by their constitutional law, they are yet for many purposes independent of one another, and, in so far as they are independent, their relations are matters of international and not of constitutional law.
Specifically, the constitutional law of a State consists of its Constitution, or so much of it as is legally effective, together with the constructions and interpretations which it has received at the hands of the courts or other competent authority.
British Constitutional Law. Under a flexible constitution like that of England, which is mainly the result of the accumulated experience of ages, the principal function of constitutional law is to discriminate between those portions of the Constitution which are law, in the strict sense of the term, i.e. which have a legal sanction and will be declared by the courts, and those that rest only upon the customs of the community and upon considerations of practical expediency. These last, which are known as the ‘custom of the Constitution,’ may have a moral sanction which makes them for the time being as effective politically as the law of the Constitution. But, being legally ineffective, i.e. unenforceable by the authority of the State, they do not, strictly speaking, belong in the category of constitutional law. As a considerable part of the British Constitution is made up of such customs and practical expedients, the range of law comprised within it is comparatively narrow. It is to be remembered, however, that though custom, in and by itself considered, is not a part of constitutional law, it may become a source of such law by being adopted by the courts and declared in judicial decisions. More than one of the so-called liberties of the subject in England have thus arisen and now form part of the common law of the land. It is to be observed, also, that in Great Britain constitutional law does not exist as a
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