The constitution of a country (or a state) is a special type of law that tells how its government is supposed to work. It also tells how the country's leaders are to be chosen and how long they get to stay in office, how new laws are made and old laws are to be changed or removed, what kind of people are eligible to vote and what other rights they are guaranteed, and how the constitution can be changed.

When a country has a good constitution and its government obeys the constitution very carefully, this situation is described as as rule of law. On the other hand, countries with repressive governments frequently do not stick to their constitutions, or have bad constitutions, and their regimes are often corrupt. A Constitution is a way of a Federation.

History

The Magna Carta of England, written in 1215, was an early type of constitution. But Britain is still one of the only countries in the world with no constitution that is in writing. The first modern constitution in the world was that of the United States in 1787, but some Native American tribes had similar charters before that.

The U.S. has one of the oldest constitutions that people are still using, and it has been changed many times over the years. It was made after the colonists won their independence from Britain. At first they had the Articles of Confederation, but they were weak and had obvious problems, so they were replaced with the Constitution.

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