About this Forum

[Admin]

Nearly every country has a constitution, and it is hard to imagine Wales wanting to do things differently. So this forum is for us to discuss what form our constitution should take, and what sort of things should be in it.  Should we have a written constitution, or should we (like New Zealand, for example) have a constitution derived from a series of Acts and Treaties?

At one level it's easy to concentrate on headline issues, such as who should be Head of State and what our official languages should be.

At a more detailed level we should consider the relationship between our legislature, executive and judiciary and what "checks and balances" we need build into our constitution so that too much power does not rest in any one set of hands. This will to some extent overlap with the Political Structures forum.

But it would be even better if some of us could post or link to full draft constitutions, or take other counties' constitutions to show us what is good or bad about them, and suggest what we could learn from them and what we could improve.

Ultimately, as well as defining what rights and duties we have as citizens, any constitution should also define the limits of how far the state can intrude into our lives. In particular it must define the limits of politicians, so it is important that drawing up a constitution is not left solely in the hands of those same politicians.