Specyfika konstytucjonalizmu stanowego w USA
Peculiarities of American State Constitutionalism

Summary/Abstract: The article summarizes major peculiarities of American state constitutionalism, understood as a set of general principles governing form, legal nature, and content of state constitutions. It focuses primarily on the areas in which state constitutions differ from the federal Constitution. With the large difference in length as its starting point, the article analyzes such features of state constitutions as greater level of detail, broader catalog of constitutional subject matters, frequent incidence of constitutional legislation, plenary as opposed to enumerated character of state governmental powers, and relative ease of constitutional change at state level. It concludes that the foregoing features of state constitutions primarily reflect distrust in state governments (particularly legislatures) and willingness of political actors to treat constitutions as ordinary policy instruments as opposed to fundamental law. The article further examines the influence of those features on state constitutional interpretation, noting that the greater specificity and elasticity of state constitutions on one hand diminishes importance of originalism, but on the other hand – promotes strict textualism and is one of the leading causes of lesser incidence on informal constitutional changes (especially judge‑made) in the states.

• Details
• Contents