Editing Constitution (section)

==General features==
Generally, every modern written constitution confers specific powers on an organization or institutional entity, established upon the primary condition that it abides by the constitution's limitations. According to Scott Gordon, a political organization is constitutional to the extent that it "contain[s] [[institution]]alized mechanisms of power control for the protection of the interests and [[Liberty|liberties]] of the [[citizenry]], including those that may be in the [[Minority group|minority]]".<ref name="Gordon1999">{{cite book |last=Gordon |first=Scott |title=Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today |url=https://archive.org/details/controllingstate00gord_656 |url-access=limited |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1999 |page=[https://archive.org/details/controllingstate00gord_656/page/n16 4] |isbn=978-0-674-16987-6}}</ref>

Activities of officials within an organization or polity that fall within the constitutional or statutory authority of those officials are termed "within power" (or, in Latin, ''intra vires''); if they do not, they are termed "beyond power" (or, in Latin, ''[[ultra vires]]''). For example, a [[students' union]] may be prohibited as an organization from engaging in activities not concerning students; if the union becomes involved in non-student activities, these activities are considered to be ''ultra vires'' of the union's charter, and nobody would be compelled by the charter to follow them. An example from the constitutional law of [[sovereign state]]s would be a provincial [[parliament]] in a [[federal state]] trying to legislate in an area that the constitution allocates exclusively to the federal parliament, such as ratifying a treaty. Action that appears to be beyond power may be [[judicial review|judicially reviewed]] and, if found to be beyond power, must cease. Legislation that is found to be beyond power will be "invalid" and of no force; this applies to primary legislation, requiring constitutional authorization, and secondary legislation, ordinarily requiring statutory authorization. In this context, "within power", ''intra vires'', "authorized" and "valid" have the same meaning; as do "beyond power", ''ultra vires'', "not authorized" and "invalid".

In most but not all modern states the constitution has supremacy over ordinary [[statutory law]] (see [[#Uncodified constitution|Uncodified constitution]] below); in such states when an official act is unconstitutional, i.e. it is not a power granted to the government by the constitution, that act is ''null and void'', and the nullification is ''[[ab initio]]'', that is, from inception, not from the date of the finding. It was never "law", even though, if it had been a statute or statutory provision, it might have been adopted according to the procedures for adopting legislation. Sometimes the problem is not that a statute is unconstitutional, but that the application of it is, on a particular occasion, and a court may decide that while there are ways it could be applied that are constitutional, that instance was not allowed or legitimate. In such a case, only that application may be ruled unconstitutional. Historically, the remedies for such violations have been petitions for common law [[writ]]s, such as ''[[quo warranto]]''.

Scholars debate whether a constitution must necessarily be [[Autochthon (ancient Greece)|autochthonous]], resulting from the nation's "spirit". [[Hegel]] said "A constitution...is the work of centuries; it is the idea, the consciousness of rationality so far as that consciousness is developed in a particular nation."<ref>{{cite book |title=Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law|date=May 17, 2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-957861-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uP3VWeTMnxsC}}</ref>