The era of the written constitution was ushered in by American and French revolutions. They meant to break with the past, to make a new start, and so they sat down and thought out of government. They put down in writing a framework of administration and an allocation of powers and a system of restraints on power. Their invention of the written Constitution has been subsequently adopted by every nation that faces the problem of making a new start and operating under the rule of law.

The American Constitution has had tremendous impact on world opinion and unusual value for the frames of other Constitutional systems, particularly during the nineteenth century, when the struggling American nation was a symbol of freedom to much of the world. The French and American Constitutions started what has been called a “Constitutional cult”. Even Tsar Alexander of Russia corresponded with Thomas Jefferson [E] [Es] [F] [I] to learn how the American Constitution functioned, and the abortive Russian Constitution of 1820 was the first Constitution attempt by a European ruler to combine the federal and monarchical principles.

The revolutionary movements of the mid-nineteenth century in Europe got much of their inspiration from America. This was especially true in Germany, where the revolutionists of 1848-1849 constantly referred to American example and wanted to create a free Germany “like America”. The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 borrowed from the American Constitution both in broad matters of principle and in matters of drafting and detail. Key articles were drawn almost textually from the American document, which had been translated into German and widely circulated.

For the Latin American countries that gained their independence in the nineteenth century, it was the federal character of the American Constitution and the strong independent executive that were most attractive. The highly centralized, bureaucratic organization that Napoleon had developed in France was familiar to Latin America and might have seemed better adapted to the conditions prevailing there. But centralism was associated with conservatism, whereas federalism had a liberal image and was favoured regardless of its appropriateness to local political or geographic conditions. When the Brazilian monarchy was overthrown in 1889, a federal republic, with a Constitution modelled after that of the United States, took its place.

The American federal pattern was more successfully followed by the Swiss Constitution of 1848, and by two countries in the British Commonwealth, Canada (1867) and Australia (1900). Decisions by the United States Supreme Court regulating relations between the federal government and the states are cited and often followed by the Courts of Canada, Australia and other federal countries.

In the twentieth century, as the United States has become rich, powerful and conservative, its example has become less attractive to developing nations, which find it hard to identify with the American colossus. To the extent that the American Constitution has remained a model, it is two of its liberal features – the Bill of Rights and judicial protection for the individual – that have been influential. The institution of a strong Supreme Court, with power to enforce Constitutional restrictions on the executive and the legislature, was adopted in several of the post-world War II Constitutions, notably those of Germany, Italy, and India.