通过对政治宪法的性质和形式的考察，证明划定其范围和目的的传统方法过于狭窄：政治宪法所关涉之事乃是使政府成为可能并赋予其权力以及限制政府和约束政府。这一概念也被用于描述一组虽然核心但却尚不明确的政治自由---尽管它们经常被湮没并且经常被替换。针对一些学者所说的从政治宪法向法律宪法的迁移来对三种有争议的假设进行考察：第一种假设涉及的是广为流传的，但却是错误的，针对政治宪法的意识形态式理解；第二种假设涉及的是“法律性”抵御来自“政治性”的控制的能力；第三种假设涉及的是法律性在保护政治自由时的有效性。贯穿文章的一个鲜明尝试是用证据来阐明政治宪法在上述情况下富有弹性。“,”The first part of this paper examines the nature and form of the political constitution, and argues that tradi-tional approaches to its scope and purpose are too narrow in focus:the political constitution is about enabling and em-powering government, as well as containing and constraining it;it is also predicated upon a body of core and indeter-minate political freedoms ( albeit frequently submerged and often displaced) . The second part of the paper examines three contestable assumptions about what some claim to be a move from a political to a legal constitution. The first re-lates to the widespread ( but flawed) ideological understanding of the political constitution; the second relates to the capacity of the “legal” to resist capture by the “political”; and the third relates to the effectiveness of the legal to protect political freedom. An attempt is made throughout unusually to illustrate argument with evidence, in this in-stance about the resilient political constitution.