The various types of constitutions include:
- Written Constitution: These are the laws of the country that are found in a single document (book) at a particular time. E.g. Nigeria 1999 constitution.
- Unwritten constitution: This is when all the important law of a country are found in many documents (but not in a single document). The Great Britain operations an unwritten constitution.
- Flexible Constitution: This is when the process of amending a constitution is not difficult/complicated.
- This when the process of amending a constitution is difficult/cumbersome/complicated.
- Federal constitution: This is a type of constitution in which the powers of the state are shared between two or more levels of government. Examples of countries are Nigeria, Canada and the United States.
- Unitary Constitution: This is a type of constitution in which all the powers of a state (country) is performed by the central government. i.e. the central authority performs all governmental powers. Examples of a country that practices this system/form of constitution are Ghana, Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria, New Zealand and South Africa. The central have the power to create and dissolve delegated to its subordinate government.
- Confederal Constitution: This is a loose association of independent/sovereign states. It is a constitution based on loose union of independent or sovereign states. A confederation had existed for a short time. The two countries only agreed on few items of legislations inter-governmental powers.
Evaluation:
- Define written and unwritten constitutions
- List two (2) countries each which practice(s) flexible and rigid constitution