Not quite true. He was refusing that Voldemort was back, not that there wasn't an emergency. It's just he viewed the emergency as Dumbledore trying to seize power.

Remember that Fudge and Dumbledore got on well up until OotP. Fudge would have had no reason to give Dumbledore the boot. I considered having the Wizengamot elect him, but then I considered the ease at which Fudge got rid of Dumbledore in OotP, and the ease with which Fudge elected himself Chief Warlock in Dumbledore's place and decided that it was a Minister-chosen position.

Too kind? All I've given them is the right to trial, and even then the trial can be by an appointed lower court, which could in effect be just some committee in the Department for Control of Magical Creatures.

I didn't want to mention blood purity explicitly, since it's considered politically incorrect in the wizarding world (mudblood considered a foul word by most people), but I tried to add it some subtle undertones. For example:

This would effectively mean that the Wizengamot is hereditary.

Mugwump is a position in the International Federation of Wizards and therefore not covered by a single nation's constitution. You'd have to go to the IFW's constitution for what a Mugwump does.

Land ownership was something I was going to include, but then thought that it would get too bogged down in technicalities etc. So in the end I decided that land ownership would be something that the law deals with, rather than the constitution.

State of Emergency = War. Also Article 6 Section III mentions the Minister is in charge of foreign policy, part of which is war.

Article 6, section III says that the Minister has the power and responsibility to regulate Dark Magic.

Would you really mention a building in a constitution? It'd be like mentioning the White House in the American Constitution. I've mentioned the Wizengamot's power to judge and sentence, and sending someone to Azkaban is a part of this, but the ability to judge and sentence is a much broader role than just sending people to Azkaban.

If you think about it, there isn't so much in the Muggle world either. After 11, English class (at least in the UK) tends to switch from learning how to use English as a language to the study of literature. You get better at English simply through reading and practice - in all your subjects.

Hogwarts provides for this. There is plenty to read, and the students are writing essays all the time, so they're getting practice.

I would disagree. If anything, I've limited his power compared to canon, considering that in canon he can make laws on a whim.

Except that the Wizengamot has judicial power, and nothing else in canon. I've already given them too much power by having them approve laws.

This is pretty much up to personal opinion. All we know about the Warlock's Council is that it existed and a few dates of certain rulings of theirs.

The only other thing we know is that the members of the Warlock's Council had far too much power - Quidditch Through The Ages mentions a Quidditch match where a member of the Warlock's Council delivers punishment to someone arbitrarily.

 

The Preamble should be longer. It should describe the situation that lead to declaring the constitution.

I think that in Article Two there should be a section sign about that: All magical people are equal in the eyes of law. It is one of the basics of all constitutions.

Also, I think that Muggles would be mentioned in Article Three not Four. They are, after all humans, therefore, they are "better" than "Non-Human Magical Beings of Near-Human Intelligence".

One more thing. What about the right to resist the unlawful and unjust government?

 

Yeah, I wanted to make it longer but didn't know what to write lol.

And all magical people being equal was implicit when the various sections of the articles apply the rights to "all magical people". But the lack of an explicit statement that all magical people being equal opens the door for Pureblood discrimination.

Remember, I'm not trying to write a perfect constitution here: just one that fits the books.

I could switch it around, but order doesn't really hold any significance, so it would serve no purpose. And Muggles being better than magical creatures is up for grabs. Would a person like Lucius Malfoy treat a Centaur or a Muggle better?

There isn't one. I don't think the Ministry of Magic would give away that power to the populace. Hell, even in the real world, the United States is the only country that I know of that gives its population the right to rebel.

 

Well, them and the freaky French

 

It would have to be Anglo-Saxon. With all the mention of spells, reading a Latin version of the MoM Constitution aloud could be akin to singing the song that ends the earth.

 

As you wrote down in Article Two, section sign two: The Ministry of Magic declares the corrupt government known as The Warlock’s Council to be illegitimate and henceforth disbanded.

You can write that the Warlock's Council was feudal, authoritarian body consisting of only oldest pureblood families. And the lesser pureblood rebelled and declared (The Constitution) their own government (The Ministry). And then there was an civil war between the old and new government.

They have rights to something, but they are not equal in the eyes of law. There are laws about trials,but they do not guarantee the same treatment of people of different social status.

Yes. It opens door for pureblood discrimination, but IMO this law should be included. The MoM was established in XVII/XVIII century and in that time the term "equality in the eyes of law" applyed only to white males (the right to vote applyed only to white male with a hefty fortune). It could be the same in the Wizarding World. Their definition of that term could only applye only to pureblood wizards and witches.

 

We weren't actually privy to how the various decrees came to be passed. Maybe he has the power to make laws as he pleases but more likely he had to fight for every one of them. Remember those decrees weren't just dumped on Hogwarts all at once. They were passed one at a time over the course of a year, no doubt helped along by biased interviews and articles in the Daily Prophet and bribes thanks to Malfoy's money.

Also I don't remember it being written anywhere in canon that Fudge made himself Chief Warlock. I could be wrong about this though.

 

I would say that they were only passed one at a time because the "problems" they addressed only came up one at a time. For example, at the beginning of the year they'd have no reason to ban the Quibbler: it was only after that interview that it became necessary, and so the decree was passed.

If we take the Chief Warlock to be he who presides over the Wizengamot (which most do) then Fudge was Chief Warlock in OotP, since he was presiding over Harry's trial.

 

Actually, back then Latin was the language of the scholarly class, so I would suppose all legal documents would be written in it. Anglo-Saxon was the language of the lay and the uneducated, there were several Kings during that time that could speak many languages. I imagine with the ease of travelling for magical people they would be much more learned in foreign languages.

Aekiel

 

Also, the Ministry was formed too recently to be in Anglo-Saxon. We have dates of rulings by the Warlock's council as late as the 18th Century, so the MoM is quite a new institution.

 

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timeline.html

It couldn't be in Anglo-Saxon. It would be in the same style as the U.S. Constitution, since according to the Lexicon, the MoM wasn't founded until 1700. Anglo-Saxon (Old English) stopped being spoken back around the 11th century. That's a period of 800 years, roughly. Also, of trivial note, Old English would be quite illsuited for Taure's fictional constitution: Old English only had around 3000 words in its collective vocabulary (which is pretty standard for most of the world's languages, as the modern giants only have these bloated, reduntant, massive vocabularies through age and developing sophistication of the world that they must describe - most of the world's 6,000 languages are spoken by back-water tribes that have very little they need to describe). It wasn't until the Norman Conquest that we started seeing the beginings of English's trend towards Lexical Bloat, and even then, mostly it was just doublings such as cow/beef, pig/pork, hardy welcome/cordial reception, all resulting from an English peasentry and Norman rulers (the peasents raisded the cow, the Norman Lords ate the beef).

Also note that Shakespeare wrote in an English style that was archaic in its day and age - Elizabethian England didn't speak like the characters of Romeo and Juliet. All those Thees and Thous and Wherefores dropped out of the language about a hundred or so years before Shakespeare was even born.