‘A constitution is only worth the practices it establishes’

LECAP — What should a non-lawyer understand first about a constitution?

That it organises the separation of powers, and that this separation is never secured by drafting alone. A text may allocate competences perfectly: what decides the outcome is how each institution actually exercises its own and respects the others’.

LECAP — Where does that gap show up in practice?

In deadlines, in appointments, in whether the available procedures are used at all. An institution that is never seized eventually stops counting, even where the text gives it a role. Conversely, an institution regularly called upon builds its own case law and becomes a real actor.

LECAP — What can a citizen do with that reading?

Read institutional news by asking, every time, which procedure was followed and which was not. That is often more instructive than the content of the decision itself. Respect for form is not a lawyer’s detail: it is what separates a decision from a fait accompli.