1812 Constitution

The 1812 Imperial Constitution, formally the Imperial Constitution of Belhavia and her Territories and commonly referred to in shorthand as the 1812 Constitution (colloquially), is the official legal document that is established as the supreme law of the land in the Empire of Belhavia. The constitution describes out the framework of the various officers of government and their titles, duties, and obligations; it establishes the branches of government and their separated powers; it details the process of creating and executing laws; lastly, the document lays out the philosophical and political ideals, values, and rationales undergirding the constitution's structure and design.

The Constitution emerged as the product of the 1811 Provisa Convention, which was convened at the behest of Emperor Harold IV, a young liberal reformer. He was, in turn, persuaded by the Reformists at court, influenced by the Arthuristan Enlightenment and its ideals of constitutionalism and accompanying formulations of justifying legal theory over the reactionary Tories which favored keeping the then-system of absolute monarchy and enlightened despotism.

The Constitution was in many ways liberal and progressive for its time; however, it also contained conservative aspects from combining secular liberal constitutionalism with religious Jewish law, placing the Torah and Talmud at the supremacy of the political order described in the document. Similar in some ways to the Rodarian political order, the Constitution acknowledged a liberal political order limited by the supremacy of God's covenant with the Jewish Nation, Jewish religious law, and the unquestionable power of the Monarchy of Belhavia as God's representative to lead his people. In this way, the 1812 Constitution can be - and often is by many academics - described as the midway point between Emmerian liberal constitutionalism and Rodarian theocratic constitutionalism.