The Process of Constitution Making in Latin America

Extract

Latin America as an area would yield to few if any other regions of the world in its devotion to what it considers the constitutional process and, indeed, the supremacy of constitutions in establishing and ordering the political life of the several states. If the mere number of excursions into the practical exercise of constitution-making were to be considered significant—which it probably is at most only in a limited way—it might lead to the conclusion that the Latins were affected by some form of legpmania. A compilation of Latin America constitutions published a little more than a decade ago indicated that as of the beginning of 1948 the twenty states had written a total of 200 basic laws since their respective achievements of independence. Several additional ones have since been drafted.