Guides to the law
A Slow Reading of the Federal Constitution
A sample guide, to show how a guide reads on the site: how to read the Federal Constitution slowly, one Part and one Article at a time.
This is a sample page. It shows how one of her guides to the law will read on the site; the guide itself is still to be written.
Start with its shape
The Federal Constitution is set out in Parts, each made up of Articles, with Schedules at the end. Read the list of Parts first, as you would the contents page of a book, so you know where each idea lives before you read any of it closely.
Three places to begin
- Article 4, which makes the Constitution the supreme law of the Federation.
- Part II, Articles 5 to 13, on the fundamental liberties.
- Article 8, on equality before the law.
Read one clause at a time
Take a single Article and read it slowly, clause by clause. Note who it speaks to, what it allows and what it forbids. Many clauses are qualified, "subject to" another Article or to a law Parliament may pass; follow the qualification before you decide what the clause means.
A constitution rewards the reader who goes slowly.
Read it as it stands today
The text has been amended many times since 1957. Read a current copy, and when an Article surprises you, find out when it was changed, and why.
Nothing on this page is legal advice.