Constitutional Scepticism and Local Facts

Do written constitutions matter? In his important and provocative book about written constitutions, Brian Christopher Jones seems to say ‘not much’. He takes constitutional idolatry as his target and defines it as ‘drastically and persistently over-selling the importance and effects of written constitutions’ (p. 5). Idolatry of this sort, he warns, ‘turns [constitutions] into false gods of our legal, political and societal communities’ (p. 11). It turns out, though, that Jones is not quite saying what he means. If written constitutions aren’t very important, then they cannot be very evil, and Jones seems to think that their potential for evil is quite large. That potential is central to his opposition to the movement in the United Kingdom favouring the creation of an integrated, written constitution – an opposition that motivates the book. Still, Jones’s initial formulation, misleading as it is, forces us to confront particularistic questions about the circumstances in which constitutions matter, and why and how they matter under those circumstances. After a brief summary of Jones’s argument, the bulk of this review is devoted to suggesting answers to these questions.