Gun Control & RKBA

Since that seventeenth day of September 1787, a one-document constitution has been deemed an essential characteristic of nationhood. Today, of the 192 independent nations of the world, all but a very few have such a constitution or are committed to having one. Among the exceptions are the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Israel—democratic nations with sophisticated constitutional jurisprudence but no one specific document that can be called a constitution.

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Conversely, the influence of the U.S. Constitution has been carried abroad by Americans who have been called upon to serve as advisers in the writing of other constitutions. Americans have helped draft the Liberian, Mexican, German, Japanese, and Zimbabwean constitutions. American scholars also provided ideas for constitutional reform in the Philippines [and more recently in Eastern Europe and the middle East].

The principal reason for the influence of the Philadelphia Constitution abroad, however, can be summed up in one word—success. America is the richest, freest, and most powerful country in the world, with the longest-lived constitution. The second oldest is Belgium's, from 1831, followed by Norway's, from 1841. There are only four other countries that have constitutions written before the twentieth century: Argentina in 1853, Luxembourg in 1868, Switzerland in 1878, and Columbia in 1886. Seven other constitutions were created before World War II.

The U.S. Constitution has withstood the test of time. U.S. constitutional research is a major project in at least a dozen countries, as its value is being analyzed with a view to the writing of new constitutions.

Albert P. Blaustein was professor of law at Rutgers (The State University of New Jersey) School of Law. He authored numerous scholarly works on the subject of constitutionalism including a six-volume work on the U.S. Constitution entitled Constitution of Dependencies and Special Sovereignties. Blaustein helped draft more than 40 constitutions worldwide and visited many of those countries. In 1991, he helped to write the constitution for the Russian Republic. Professor Blaustein died in 1994.