Reflecting on fifteen centuries of constitutional experiment readers may feel as if they were visiting a vast churchyard and reading the inscriptions on the tombstones which recall, extol or curse bygone regimes. Some of the dinosaurs in the cemetery, such as the hallowed medieval kingdoms, have been dead for a long time. Others, such as the Nazi or communist empires, were alive and kicking only a few decades or even a few years ago. Not all Constitutions are dead, however. Indeed, some old and venerable political systems are still flourishing but, in this changing world, nobody knows for how long. The variety of Constitutions the West has produced is bewildering. There was the personal rule of monarchs by God's grace in Charlemagne's or Frederick II's post- or pseudo-Roman empires, or in Henry VIII's or Francis I's sovereign nation-states at the time of the Renaissance. There was royal absolutism of the obscurantist or of the enlightened variety, but also modern constitutional and parliamentary kingdoms. There were city-states, democratic or aristocratic, like Florence or Venice, but also confederations of free peasant communities, like Switzerland, and federal, city-based sovereign nations, like the Republic of the United Netherlands. And if the First French Republic was run by the violent ideologues of the comité de salut public, the Third was a sedate regime where a contented population maintained the paix bourgeoise. Is this endless list, which must, of course, include the plebeian totalitarian regimes of our own century, more than a chaotic and meaningless succession of failed, futile or precarious attempts, a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’?