Written constitution in the context of "Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom"

Constitutional history is the area of historical study covering both written constitutions and uncodified constitutions, and became an academic discipline during the 19th century. The Oxford Companion to Law (1980) defined it as the study of the "origins, evolution and historical development" of the constitution of a community.

The English term is attributed to Henry Hallam, in his 1827 work The Constitutional History of England. It overlaps legal history and political history. For uncodified constitutions, the status of documents seen as contributing to the formation of a constitution has an aspect of diplomatics.

The Constitution of Australia (also known as the Commonwealth Constitution) is the fundamental law that governs the political structure of Australia. It is a written constitution, which establishes the country as a federation under a constitutional monarchy governed with a parliamentary system. Its eight chapters set down the structure and powers of the three constituent parts of the federal level of government: the Parliament, the Executive Government and the Judicature.

The Constitution was drafted between 1891 and 1898 at a series of conventions conducted by representatives of the six self-governing British colonies in Australia: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. This final draft was then approved by each state in a series of referendums from 1898 to 1900. The agreed constitution was transmitted to London where, after some minor modifications, it was enacted as section 9 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It came into effect on 1 January 1901, at which point the six colonies became states within the new Commonwealth of Australia.

The Constitution of 3 May 1791, titled the Government Act, was a written constitution for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that was adopted by the Great Sejm that met between 1788 and 1792. The Commonwealth was a dual monarchy comprising the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the new constitution was intended to address political questions following a period of political agitation and gradual reform that began with the Convocation Sejm of 1764 and the election that year of the Commonwealth's last monarch, Stanisław August Poniatowski. It was the first codified, modern constitution (possessing checks and balances and a tripartite separation of powers) in Europe and the second in the world, after that of the United States.

The Constitution sought to implement a more effective constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the government's protection, mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. It banned pernicious parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any single deputy, who could veto and thus undo all the legislation adopted by that Sejm. The Commonwealth's neighbours reacted with hostility to the adoption of the Constitution. King Frederick William II of Prussia broke the Prussian alliance with the Commonwealth, joining with Imperial Russia under Catherine the Great and the anti-reform Targowica Confederation of Polish-Lithuanian magnates, to defeat the Commonwealth in the Polish–Russian War of 1792.

The Constitution of the Republic of Singapore is the supreme law of Singapore. A written constitution, the text which took effect on 9 August 1965 is derived from the Constitution of the State of Singapore 1963, provisions of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia made applicable to Singapore by the Republic of Singapore Independence Act 1965 (No. 9 of 1965, 1985 Rev. Ed.), and the Republic of Singapore Independence Act itself. The text of the Constitution is one of the legally binding sources of constitutional law in Singapore, the others being judicial interpretations of the Constitution, and certain other statutes. Non-binding sources are influences on constitutional law such as soft law, constitutional conventions, and public international law.

In the exercise of its original jurisdiction – that is, its power to hear cases for the first time – the High Court carries out two types of judicial review: judicial review of legislation, and judicial review of administrative acts. Although in a 1980 case the Privy Council held that the fundamental liberties in Part IV of the Constitution should be interpreted generously, Singapore courts usually adopt a philosophy of deference to Parliament and a strong presumption of constitutional validity, which has led to fundamental liberties being construed narrowly in certain cases. The courts also generally adopt a purposive approach, favouring interpretations that promote the purpose or object underlying constitutional provisions.