But though the Southern States, when drafting a constitution to unite themselves, narrowed the difference to this fine point by omitting to assert the right to secede, the fact remained that by seceding from the Union they had already acted on the concept that it was composed primarily of sovereign states.

Slavery was prohibited in Massachusetts by the terms of the constitution of 1780, which declared `` all men are born free and equal ''.

The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 founding states that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution.

It was an era of constitution writing — most states were busy at the task — and leaders felt the new nation must have a written constitution, even though other nations did not.

Its constitution was ratified 1966 and came into effect 1967.

By the middle of the 19th century, industrialisation swept away most of the city's medieval rules of production and commerce, although the entirely corrupt remains of the city's mediæval constitution was kept in place ( compare the famous remarks of Georg Forster in his Ansichten vom Niederrhein ) until 1801, when Aachen became the " chef-lieu du département de la Roer " in Napoléon's First French Empire.

Though he was destined to be a strongly counter-reforming emperor, Alexander had little prospect of succeeding to the throne during the first two decades of his life, as he had an elder brother, Nicolas, who seemed of robust constitution.

Following the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion, a state convention was called to pass a new constitution, including provisions to disfranchise free people of color.

The constitution was submitted for a public vote and Johnson campaigned for its adoption ; his support of the new work provided him with additional positive statewide exposure.

It is most usual to date Athenian democracy from Cleisthenes, since Solon's constitution fell and was replaced by the tyranny of Peisistratus, whereas Ephialtes revised Cleisthenes ' constitution relatively peacefully.

In 317 BC he returned with an army of mercenaries under a solemn oath to observe the democratic constitution which was then set up.

Each signed the league's constitution, and the National League was officially born.

In 2002, O ' Donohue launched a court action that argued the Act of Settlement violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the case was dismissed by the court, which found that, as the Act of Settlement is part of the Canadian constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not have supremacy over it.

A petition proposing a radical change in the German constitution and expressing his basic social ideas ( signed by Herman Hesse, among others ) was widely circulated.

As another consequence of the disturbances, a new constitution was accepted in 1831 which came into effect on 4 September of that year.

The constitution was more conservative than other constitutions existing at this time in the German Union.

A new constitution was adopted in 2007 ( the Virgin Islands Constitution Order, 2007 ) and came into force when the Legislative Council was dissolved for the 2007 general election.

The Head of Government under the new constitution is the Premier ( prior to the new constitution the office was referred to as Chief Minister ), who is elected in a general election along with the other members of the ruling government as well as the members of the opposition.

A European-African advisory council was formed in 1951, and the 1961 constitution established a consultative legislative council.

* Constitution of 1891 – the republic was proclaimed in 1889, but a new constitution was not promulgated until 1891.

Six of these states then adopted a constitution and declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America.

Angola changed from a one-party Marxist-Leninist system ruled by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola ( MPLA ), in place since independence in 1975, to a multiparty democracy based on a new constitution adopted in 1992.

* 1919 – The constitution of the Weimar Republic is adopted.

In 1972, a constitution was adopted, a parliament elected, and Lon Nol became president.

Following the collapse of the ruling Communist Party in Yugoslavia, Croatia adopted a new constitution in 1990 – which replaced the 1974 constitution adopted by the Socialist Republic of Croatia – and organised its first multi-party elections.

In 1985, the TRNC adopted a constitution and held its first elections.

In 1985, they adopted a constitution and held elections — an arrangement recognized only by Turkey.

The PRC adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982.

After Napoleon Bonaparte in November 1799 staged a coup against the Directory government, the French Republic adopted a constitution, which conferred executive powers upon three Consuls, elected for a period of ten years.

The constitution, adopted by referendum in 2005, and promulgated by President Joseph Kabila in February 2006, establishes a decentralized semi-presidential republic, with a separation of powers between the three branches of government-executive, legislative and judiciary, and a distribution of prerogatives between the central government and the provinces.

The last article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was adopted on 26 August 1789, by the National Constituent Assembly ( Assemblée nationale constituante ), during the period of the French Revolution, as the first step toward writing a constitution for France.

This assembly adopted the constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in December 1994.

* 1917 – The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Meanwhile, on 24 June, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, variously referred to as the French Constitution of 1793 or Constitution of the Year I.

On 24 April 1870, the dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith Dei Filius was adopted unanimously.

Former President Omar Bongo OndimbaIn March 1991 a new constitution was adopted.

After approval by the National Assembly, the PDG Central Committee, and the president, the Assembly unanimously adopted the constitution in March 1991.

The constitution adopted in 1963 changed the governor's term to four years, starting in 1967.

It was only in the constitution of 1812 that the name " Españas " for the Spanish kingdom and the use of the title of " King of the Spains " were officially adopted.

The constitution of 1876 adopted for the first time the name " España " (" Spain ") for the Spanish nation, and from then on monarchs used the title of " King of Spain ".

Lincoln believed that curtailing slavery in these ways would economically expunge it, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, under the constitution.

From 2002 to 2010, the system as defined by the constitution of 1992 functioned in a relatively normal way.

The city's status as the capital of the nation is governed by the constitution.

Loyalty requires affection also to the office of the Sovereign, attachment to royalty, attachment to the law and to the constitution of the realm, and he who would, by force or by fraud, endeavour to prostrate that law and constitution, though he may retain his affection for its head, can boast but an imperfect and spurious species of loyalty ( R v O ' Connell ( 1844 ) 7 ILR 261 ).

South Australia became a self-governing colony in 1856 with the ratification of a new constitution by the British parliament.

King Alexander tried to reconcile political parties by unveiling a liberal constitution of his own initiative, introducing for the first time in the constitutional history of Serbia the system of two chambers ( skupština and senate ).

In yet another coup d ' état, he suspended ( March 1903 ) the constitution for half an hour, time enough to publish the decrees by which the old senators and councillors of state were dismissed and replaced by new ones.

Congress passed a fourth Reconstruction Act ( again over a veto ) to provide for ratification of each state's constitution by a majority of those voting ( rather than requiring the vote to be all those registered ).

Under the Roman alliance, the more oligarchic parts of the Athenian constitution, the Areopagus and election of officials, became relatively more important, and the Assembly and selection by lot less so.

* 1982 – Patriation of the Canadian constitution in Ottawa by Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada.

Along with the Bill of Rights 1689, it remains today one of the main constitutional laws governing the succession to not only the throne of the United Kingdom, but, following British colonialism, the resultant doctrine of reception, and independence, also to those of the other Commonwealth realms, whether by willing deference to the act as a British statute or as a patriated part of the particular realm's constitution.

) Hilton also claims a Roman Catholic monarch would therefore be unable to be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and points to the examples of European states that have similar religious provisions for their monarchs: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, whose constitutions compel their monarchs to be Lutherans, the Netherlands, the constitution of which insists its monarchs be members of the Protestant House of Orange, and Belgium, which has a constitution that provides for the succession to be through Roman Catholic houses.