Are civil liberties better protected in a country with a written constitution?

... Constitutions are important in all countries for they affirm the basic principals according to which they should be governed. Every country has a constitution of some kind, but the term is used in two different but related ways (Watts, 2003). There are many definitions of a constitution, such as that provided by the Collins English Dictionary: 'the system or body of fundamental principles according to which a nation state or body politic is constituted and governed' (Collins, 1995). For the purposes of this paper a working definition will be; 'an agreed set of rules governing the composition, powers and methods of operation of the main institutions of government and the general principles applicable to their relations to citizens (Watts, 2003). In the overwhelming majority of cases, they are written documents, although even where this is not the case the country can still be regarded as having a constitution. They are

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