Flashcards: Constitutional law

A member of parliament (MP) is the representative of the voters to a parliament.

Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people's rule is the principle that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power.

Citizenship is the status of a person recognized under the custom or law as being a legal member of a sovereign state.

Constitutionalism is "a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law".

Not to be confused with Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793, a second declaration, written in 1793 but never formally adopted.

The executive is the organ that exercises authority in and holds responsibility for the governance of a state.

In political science, legitimacy is the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime.

Representative democracy (also indirect democracy, representative republic, or psephocracy) is a type of democracy founded on the principle of elected officials representing a group of people, as opposed to direct democracy.

A grandfather clause (or grandfather policy) is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases.

"No Taxation Without Representation" is a slogan originating during the 1750s and 1760s that summarized a primary grievance of the American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, which was one of the major causes of the American Revolution.

The Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Акт проголошення незалежності України, translit. Akt proholoshennya nezalezhnosti Ukrayiny) was adopted by the Ukrainian parliament on 24 August 1991.

Fundamental rights are generally regarded set of legal protections in the context of a legal system, where such system is itself based upon this same set of basic, fundamental, or inalienable rights.

An organic law is a law, or system of laws, that form the foundation of a government, corporation or any other organization's body of rules.

Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent where the agent lacked authority to legally bind the principal.

An acclamation, in its most common sense, is a form of election that does not use a ballot.

Moral, ethical, legal, and political discussions use the concept of dignity to express the idea that a being has an innate right to be valued, respected, and to receive ethical treatment.

In United States constitutional interpretation, the Living Constitution (or loose constructionism) is the claim that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning or that it has the properties of an animate being in the sense that it changes.

An indemnity is an obligation by a person (indemnitor) to provide compensation for a particular loss suffered by another person (indemnitee).

A freedman or freedwoman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means.

A constitutional convention is an informal and uncodified procedural agreement that is followed by the institutions of a state.

The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, also known as the Snyder Act, was proposed by Representative Homer P.

Judicial activism refers to judicial rulings suspected of being based on personal or political considerations rather than on existing law.

A general welfare clause is a section that appeared in many constitutions, as well as in some charters and statutes, which provides that the governing body empowered by the document may enact laws to promote the general welfare of the people, sometimes worded as the public welfare.

The constitution (Grundgesetz) of the Federal Republic of Germany establishes a separate Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht) that is empowered with reviewing acts of the legislature (so mainly from the Federal Republic Congress - the Bundestag) for their constitutionality.

The term basic law is used in some places as an alternative to "constitution", implying it is a temporary but necessary measure without formal enactment of constitution.

Civilian control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making in the hands of the civilian political leadership, rather than professional military officers.

A constitutional right can be a prerogative or a duty, a power or a restraint of power, recognized and established by a sovereign state or union of states.

The term State of Defence (in German: Verteidigungsfall or V-Fall) refers to the legal status of the Federal Republic of Germany if it is "under attack by armed force or imminently threatened with such an attack".

A plenary power or plenary authority is the separate identification, definition, and complete vesting of a power or powers or authority in a governing body or individual, to choose to act (or not to act) on a particular subject matter or area.