The 1923 Constitution of the Romanian Kingdom

Abstract

Over centuries, the state history and the constitutional development of Romania has faced many burdens, foreign domination and integration challenges. A hundred years ago, in 1923, the Kingdom of Romania was in a position to adopt its modern constitution for the first time in its history, having gained full independence in a sovereign manner and having united essentially all Romanians in one state. The Constitution of 1923 therefore undoubtedly has special values compared with the constitutions of the past and the present. The Constitution of 1923, despite all its shortcomings and limitations, is an outstanding achievement in legal history of the independent Romania, which has lasted for almost 150 years. At the time of its creation, it was no longer a small Balkan kingdom but a country that had grown in territory and power, with ambitions of a middle power on the political map of Europe, and a state as an equal with the others. When the 1923 Constitution was adopted, it recognized the challenges of integration posed by the territorial and population growth of the state but failed to address them adequately while extending the limits of the narrower constitutionalism of the former Old Kingdom, moving closer to constitutionalism in substance. For all its failures, then, this constitution, compared with the severely limited practices of its predecessor and the crude and dictatorial fundamental laws of its successors, can be called a Romanian constitution in fact, and the only one of its kind in the 20th century until 1991.