CONSTITUTION

ID pbllo law•. The organic and fund am1intal law of a nation or H state, which may be written or unwritten, emablishing the character and conception of its government, laying the basic principles to which its internal life 1s to be conformed, organizing the government, and regulating, I distributing, and limiting the functions of •its different departments, and prescribing the extent and manner of the exercise of sovereign powers. In a more general sense, any fundamental or important law or edict; as the Novel Con• J stitutions of Justlnlan; the Constitutions of Clarendon. · m American law. The written instrument agreed upon by the people of the Union or of a particula't' state, as the absolute K rule of action and decision for all departments and officers of the government in respect to all the points covered by it, which must control until it shall be changed by the authority which established it, and in oppo-. l!itlon to which any act or ordinance of any L such department or officer 1s null and void. Cooley, Const. Lim. 8. [s. 259]