That’s great Skammer. I’m glad you have an understanding of the mutable nature of your constitution. I’m just not convinced every one else has the same opinion.
Yes, the word “constitution” is the important bit.
Of course it is mutable. (See those things called “Amendments?”) But it cannot be changed at the whim of a simple majority (unlike, apparently, much of the British “constitution”).
Have you any idea how difficult it is to get two-thirds of the US Senate and 2/3 of the US states to agree on anything?
You seem to be mistaking the point. No one is arguing that Sweden and The Netherlands don’t have constitutions (now). We are saying that the things that came before the US Constitution can only be defined as “constitutions” if you are using the term very broadly to include simple legislative acts that do not comprise a higher law.
Well if we are arguing about whether the British had one, I’d say it is. They didn’t seem to think so until after the US produced a written one. Then suddenly it’s “Hmm? Oh yeah, we have one of those too! And ours came first! Don’t ask us to show it to you though.”
Ah, here is the descriptive term I am looking for when I say “higher law”: “entrenchment”–
In other words, the word “constitution” by itself doesn’t necessarily carry the meaning you are asking about.
You mean the word the British never seemed to use to refer to their government until after 1789? No, I suppose not. 
If it salves wounded British pride maybe we can refer to the US as having the “oldest entrenched constitution.” And then get back to the debate as to whether that is a good thing.
Reply of Charles I to the Commons’ Petition, 1641:
That wording makes me wonder if it is a reference to a “constitution” as in “a set of laws that a set of people have made and agreed upon for government—often codified as a written document—that enumerates and limits the powers and functions of a political entity” (as defined by Wikipedia) or is it a reference to “grounded upon the … constitution of parliament” as in “the fact that we have created a parliament.”
Good point. It’s ambiguous. This from Charles I trial isn’t, however:
Bolding mine.
Uhm, I’m going to have to disagree.
In the UK, the Legislature is Sovereign. There is no balance of powers. The Legislature can override the Judiciary, or dissolve the Judiciary as it sees fit.
Neigh?
So the bill of rights, in the UK, while recognized by the courts as “more equal,” is only more equal as long as the Parliament says so. If they say no, it’s not.
When people in the US discuss constitutions – or when people discuss it in the context of this thread – they mean constitutions that cannot be changed upon a whim. A whim is through the same process as passing laws, for example: amending the constitution is more complex than passing a law changing all road marker paint from yellow/white to green/orange.
The US System of 2/3 in both the House and Senate is immensely complex, and near impossible. It takes a massive majority, and that’s only to amend the constitution, not change it in its entirety. To change it in its entirety, you’d need to call a constitutional convention, which is an even more complex, and ambiguous process.
However, in the UK, it’s theoretically possible for one group with a 51% majority of Parliament to simply say “fuck it, lets make us a new constitution” and bam, new constitution time.
The concept of Parliamentary sovereignty has come a long way since 1885:
What nonsense. A very simple, if rather crude, way of showing that the concept of a British constitution easily predates 1787 is to search for the phrase in book titles in the ESTC. A search for book titles up to 1786 containing the phrase ‘English constitution’ produces 97 results, while doing the same for ‘British constitution’ produces 27 results. Restricting the search to books published up to 1750 gives 41 for ‘English constitution’ and 15 for ‘British constitution’. (One should also note that there are others that use the phrase ‘ancient constitution’.) Almost all were clearly using these phrases in the sense of the ‘set of laws’ that ‘enumerates and limits the powers and functions of’ the British/English state. The concept was a commonplace and had been for several generations.
A search for terms doesn’t tell us much as we don’t know the context. For all we know without context, “English constitution” could refer to the national character rather than constitution in the modern sense, or even if used with reference to government it could refer to the makeup of the government.
Ridley’s quote from Charles I comes closest to showing the usage in more or less current form (allowing for the vagueness in what exactly comprises the British “constitution”).
So basically you have a set of amorphous notions, some case law, and some statutes which could be repealed at any time by a simple majority in Parliament, you have a monarch that could dissolve Parliament, a Parliament which could eliminate the judiciary, and you retain a stubborn class system. Hey, if y’all find that sufficient and you want to call it a constitution, more power to you. 
Now let’s end the hijack and get back to discussing the oldest entrenched constitution (an entrenched constitution being what I think most people outside the UK think of when they think of a “constitution”).
Leave it up to dopers to completely ignore the topic and turn it into a big meta debate. You can’t just accept the fact that “common knowledge” calls the US’s constitution the oldest and a great deal of common knowledge is technically wrong, and get on with the discussion.
The core of the topic here is: the US Constitution is really old: good or bad?
That’s why it’s so dangerous to put a question mark in your thread title here. You’re just as likely as not to end up with a torrent of replies questioning your question.
You guys must be really fun at dinner conversations.
:rolleyes:
Define “dinner” and “conversation.”
British English or American?
Well, American, obviously, since the U.S. Constitution was written in English in 1787, and the British constitution has to this day not been written in English; therefore, English is not a British language.
If Britain doesn’t have a “real” constitution by virtue of it being easily changed, then what of California? The California constitution is arguably even easier to change than their regular law, needing only a simple majority of voters with no involvement by legislators.
Im not a fan of “simple” referendum style constitutional changes, however, it’s outside of the standard system of simple legislative majority.