Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Debates that pit our nation's status as democracy or constitutional republic tend to intensify around specific policy debates or more generally among candidates in high-profile elections, such as ...
Constitution of the Year XII (First French Republic) Constitution of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1848. A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as the basic rights of citizens and, in federal countries such as the United States and Canada, the relationship between the central government ...
Prior to the American Revolution in what is now the United States—and before the coming of age of the "crowned republics" of constitutional monarchies in the United Kingdom and other European countries—democracy and republic were "used more or less interchangeably", [6] and the concepts associated with representative democracy and hence ...
Legal historian Christian G. Fritz [9] distinguishes between "constitutional questions", examining how the constitution was interpreted and applied to distribute power and authority as the new nation struggled with problems of war and peace, taxation and representation, and "questions of constitutionalism —how to identify the collective ...
The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical antiquity. [46] [47] The word comes from dêmos '(common) people' and krátos 'force/might'. [48] Under Cleisthenes, what is generally held as the first example of a type of democracy in 508–507 BC was ...
Parliamentary democracy is the dominant form of government in the European Union, Oceania, and throughout the former British Empire, with other users scattered throughout Africa and Asia. A similar system, called a council–manager government , is used by many local governments in the United States .
The U.S. Constitution was a federal one and was greatly influenced by the study of Magna Carta and other federations, both ancient and extant. The Due Process Clause of the Constitution was partly based on common law and on Magna Carta (1215), which had become a foundation of English liberty against arbitrary power wielded by a ruler.