What’s So Great About a Written Constitution?

After England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the monarchy was reinstated but under the watchful eye of Parliament, the country decided against drafting a new written constitution. Previous written constitutions under Oliver Cromwell’s rule had proved challenging, and by some accounts, disastrous—problems included the inadequate balancing and division of powers, and interpretative confusion and contradictory decisions in the courts. Almost a century later, America’s own revolution decided on a different course, drafting the U.S. Constitution, which has remained in place since 1789. This document almost immediately became a deeply revered symbol within America, and many of its features have been widely emulated around the globe.

But not every country possesses a single, written constitution, and some countries possess them in quirky forms. The United Kingdom famously does not have such a document. New Zealand possesses only a decorative one: an ordinary statute that’s been labeled a