Erring on the side of vagueness, and reminding you of our sense that constitutional law broadly engages the organization of our social life, we suggest that the constitution of a society is an assortment of important rules, principles, and practices relating to the governance of society. In this light, constitutions may address several different subjects and relationships. Typically, they deal with the structures, procedure, and powers of governmental institutions and the nature and scope of individual rights and responsibilities in the face of public power. Often, they also address relations between collectivities and between collectivities and governments, such as the relationship between aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state. Most of these subjects and relationships find expression, in one form or another, in particular provisions of the Canadian constitution.
Constitutional provisions perform several different kinds of functions.
In many cases, they establish legally enforceable obligations. They also serve to ground judicial decisions concerning the constitutionality of the exercise of power. Finally, constitutional provisions also perform a significant symbolic role, setting out fundamental values and aspirations of a country. In brief, constitutional law is an open-ended set of rules, principles, and practices that represent efforts to identify, define, and reconcile competing rights, responsibilities, and functions of governments, communities, and individuals. We hope that it will also provide some insight into the nature of law itself.