With this concise and lively treatment of constitutions and their functions, Beau Breslin aims to restore the role of text to the study of democratic constitutionalism. Marginalized by scholarly attention to the actions and interpretations of particular legal actors, he says, the U.S. Constitution as a “unique composition” serving “symbolic and practical” purposes has all too often been overlooked (pp. 3, 5). As a corrective, Breslin trains attention on seven functions served by a written constitution: transforming existing orders, conveying collective aspirations, designing institutions, mediating conflict, recognizing claims of subnational communities, empowering social actors, and constraining governmental authority. Each chapter is devoted to explicating a different function. Throughout, the author employs useful examples from around the world, with Canada, Iraq, Israel, South Africa, and the United States receiving the most attention.

Breslin's approach makes for a learned, accessible introduction to the reasons why people worldwide might turn to written constitutionalism, even if it is not always conducive to fine-grained scrutiny of any particular people's constitution-writing experience. The author is at his best when he moves beyond the various attributes of constitutions in the abstract and comments on global trends. In these places, he flirts with the empirical questions of constitutionalism over time: namely, how the practice has changed, what appears to have been learned from others' experiments, and what these lessons bode for the future of constitutionalism. He observes that constitutions have gotten longer (p. 55), and that the typical preamble, such as that of the South African Constitution, now painstakingly records a country's tragic past to be overcome instead of remaining content with universal statements on liberty and justice (p. 57). As constitutions have become more codelike, they have also devoted more space to articulating individual liberties, often in advance of establishing the structure of government (pp. 84–85).

Breslin's account stimulates several questions: Are these trends, accelerated by the processes of antitotalitarianism and decolonization, indicative of efficient writing practices or rote copying? How many are bottom-up constitutions and which are top-down charters? Could we say, with any assurance, that the ascendance of written constitutionalism has produced greater freedoms as well—or is this presumed cause-and-effect relationship between writing and liberty more imagined than proven?

Among the constitutional functions explored by Breslin, two seem particularly salient in the post-Cold War age: managing social conflict and preserving cultural heritage. Social movements worldwide have unleashed not only tales of historical oppression but also urgent pleas for legal accommodation. Breslin presents Canada as a successful episode of writing to manage conflict and recognize cultural minorities (pp. 106–110, 121–132). He marshals polls suggesting that Canadians' participation in the 1982 revision of their constitution unified them around a vision of pluralist democracy (pp. 108–109). Assuming this to be true, is it a replicable experience, or is there something about Canadian society or its traditions that made this outcome uniquely plausible?

Another of Breslin's claims worth unpacking is the impact of international opinion favoring written constitutionalism. Just as acquiring nuclear weapons once signified international stature and influence, having a constitution to call one's own secures a people a place among the community of modern nations. It must be a powerful temptation, then, to author a constitution in order to maximize aspirational and expressive gains, even when the gulf between text and enforcement is likely to be significant. Along with the advent of global constitutionalism, one might expect a corresponding rise in vastly underenforced and incompletely authorized constitutions. It is an empirical matter to discover the extent to which intended functions actually are fulfilled, or whether, instead, constitutional provisions are either ignored or work at cross-purposes.

As Breslin notes (p. 98–99), the international expectation to have a constitution of one's own is bucked by Israel, whose citizens made plans to write a unitary constitution in 1948 but have never completed the task. Two reasons are frequently cited: fears that a constitution would, first, dilute the nation's religious distinctiveness and, second, hamstring efforts to deal with matters of national security. Perhaps with Canada in mind, the author observes that authoring a Bill of Rights might “have the effect of reaching out to minority religious and ethnic groups who have long felt oppressed by government policies” (p. 100). Likewise, transparent ordering of state institutions “might go a long way toward appeasing communities that believe the largely unconstrained authority of the state has contributed to ongoing violence” (p. 100). At this point, a thicker case study of Israel, like Breslin's extensive treatment of Canada, might prove illuminating. What factors have enabled Israel to be perceived as a modern constitutional democracy while simultaneously avoiding the harshest condemnation for refusing to codify legal limits with clarity? Has the staunch support of Western allies promoted or stunted Israel's legal development?

To the extent that internal practices have allowed Israel to walk a fine line, the relatively brisk maturity of Israel's legal culture may have something to do with it. The Israeli Supreme Court's declaration of a “constitutional revolution” elevating the Basic Law to supreme normative status suggests that juridic constitutionalism has filled the void to repair any reputational damage caused by piecemeal constitutionalism. Although the 1992 Basic Laws mention only a slice of rights found in liberal nations, Aharon Barak led the Israeli Supreme Court through a creative synthesis of disparate legal texts, deeming speech and equality—two rights not mentioned in the Basic Law—to be nevertheless part of Israeli constitutional law's protection of “dignity.” Still, to what extent can judge-driven constitutionalism provide features found wanting in original design?

This leads to a deeper question: the circumstances under which underwritten or disaggregated constitutional systems succeed or fail. The inquiry may be understood as a natural outgrowth of Breslin's project, for eventually one will want to know what metrics ought to be used to assess the actual functionality of design choices. Theorists assume a necessary organic connection between a citizenry and its constitution for certain functions (e.g., aspirational, identity-making) to be realized. Is it consent, authenticity, inclusiveness, or procedural fairness that ought to be the benchmark for this connection? Although he offers Joseph Raz's perspective that the moral legitimacy of a constitution derives from the justifications of original authors but can change as time passes, Breslin himself does not take a firm position as to how a constitution maintains legitimacy over time. Perhaps—consistent with a functional account—certain core functions must be well served before a constitution is declared legitimate in the eyes of the living?

Breslin's later discussion of England's unwritten constitutional tradition suggests that a robust legal culture is essential to a polity that stands the test of time. Once developed, such a culture inculcates respect for rules and controversial outcomes, fosters lawyers and activists capable of testing written commitments, and enables jurists to envision plausible routes when democratic majorities show little patience for the enforcement of legal limits. The text of a constitution may begin the task of creating such an ethos and legalized way of life—by rhetorically empowering committed citizens and talented judges and establishing rule-of-law mechanisms with a shot at growing strong and uncorrupted. But much of these social conditions upon which success depends lie far beyond the text of a constitution. They have to do with text, but after the moment of inscription they have more to do with how others make use of the text.

Breslin's erudite book elucidates the reasons a people might engage in constitutional creation in the first place—the point at which dreams are the most glorious and words are the most inspirational. What follows can never match a people's sheer audacity in that moment, but with Breslin's helpful prompting, it may one day be possible to test their leap of faith.