Constitutional Preambles as Narratives of Peoplehood

Abstract

Most constitutions start with a preamble. A constitutional preamble is a text designed to introduce the constitution and at times to give a concise statement of the nature of the system that the constitution is supposed to capture. While they may differ in style and length, most preambles seem to serve two primary functions. First, preambles declare or identify the source of authority for the document. In most preambles it is “we the people” that is invoked as the legitimate source of authority. Second, most preambles engage in an explicit attempt to project an identity for “we the people,” how “we the people” came to be. “We the people” is at times defined through an extended historical biography. At other times, it is the presumed common ethnic origin or religious membership that are said to establish the bond, whether the people is territorially bound or not. Still at other times, it is existence of common political and moral principles that are thought to be the core constitutive elements of who the people are. Whatever the strategy, preambles attempt to imagine a usable political identity for the people, its collective agency. The “people” are viewed with sufficient agency capable of “ordaining” or “granting” the constitutional document to themselves. Of course, in many cases “we the people” is the very creation of the document itself. Thus, the “people” is simultaneously the author and product of the constitution. In this sense, preambles are performative in nature: they constitute the people as they even declare that the people are their authors. Through a close study of the constitutional preambles of all countries currently in existence, the article explores how preambles construct a politically serviceable identity of the people that is supposed to be the legitimate source of authority for the document even when the source appears to be the creation of the entity that is being invoked as a legitimate source. The formal legal status of preambles might be uncertain (whether they can or should be cited by decision-makers in the process of making binding decisions), but what is not in doubt (and what has largely been neglected) is the fact that preambles are means through which a people is said to imagine and solidify its identity. As Benedict Anderson long ago explained, an imagined identity is neither true nor false. It simply is. The article explores the processes by which this imagining takes place and the purpose for which it is adopted.