Societal constitutionalism and material constitutionalism represent two distinct approaches to understanding the foundations and functioning of constitutional systems. Societal constitutionalism emphasizes the role of social norms, cultural values, and collective identities in shaping constitutional principles. It is rooted in the idea that constitutions evolve organically from the bottom up, reflecting the shared beliefs and practices of a community. This approach highlights the importance of informal, unwritten traditions and the dynamic interplay between society and governance. In contrast, material constitutionalism focuses on the tangible, legal, and institutional frameworks that define and enforce constitutional rules. It is characterized by a top-down structure, where formal documents, laws, and established institutions serve as the primary sources of authority. While societal constitutionalism derives its legitimacy from social consensus and cultural evolution, material constitutionalism relies on codified laws and formal mechanisms to regulate power. Both approaches aim to legitimize and organize governance but differ fundamentally in their sources of authority and methods of implementation.

Thank you. However, since this is too different from the definition I've found so far, could you please give me a source for this? Thank you.

Sanja S. Petkovska I'll bet it was written by an artificial intelligence. Our eastern colleagues on this resource, as I noticed, are too fond of AI.

Best regards,

Marina

The answer to this question also depends on what we mean by constitutionalism in general. According to one approach, constitutionalism means the application of the rules of the constitution, their realisation in practice, and therefore without a constitution there is no constitutionalism, since there is no normative set of requirements against which the actual state of social coexistence can be compared.

But a constitution does not in itself mean constitutionality. In order to fulfil its constitutive and regulative function, a constitution must have normative force. However, it is not the same thing what the content of the constitution is, or more precisely, what normative content its provisions express. It is this normative content that determines whether the constitution complies with the basic principles of democratic constitutional development that have been established over the centuries, such as the requirements of popular sovereignty and representation, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the recognition and guarantee of fundamental rights, etc., which constitute the inalienable values of democratic constitutions. These principles and basic institutions formulate universal values, the main directions and demands that determine the essence, nature and structure of the constitution and the constitutional order in a decisive way. Conformity with the values crystallised by democratic constitutional development thus determines the extent to which a given constitution fulfils the requirement of constitutionality. It is therefore essential for constitutionalism that the most important political, social and economic relations of coexistence in the political community are regulated in accordance with these values, i.e. that the constitution contains these values in a normative way. If these principles are ignored, the constitution's normative content fails to meet the fundamental requirement of modern constitutional democracies based on the rule of law.

Thank you. I am, however, sure that both societal and material constitutions assume that the constitution might also be built bottom up, just how that has not been explored sufficiently. What I have concluded so far is that this is hard to manage through constitutional theory itself, but still, I find little indication of where to start.