Constitution Day, 28 June 2007

Ukraine marks the anniversary of its constitution today.

I will be brief, and deliberately so. What the constitution should say, how it should be read and who is right in the current argument are questions for Ukrainian citizens. A guest who begins answering them has misunderstood what he is here for.

What can be said by anyone is procedural. A constitution is useful to the degree that everyone expects everyone else to follow it, including when following it is inconvenient. That expectation is built slowly and by example, and it is not established by the text itself.

A good Constitution Day to everyone marking it.