How does Scotland produce a constitution?
Does Scotland need a written constitution?
Absolutely. Almost every country in the world has a written constitution and they are crucial for the proper functioning of a nation. They define how democracy works, enshrine legal rights and make sure that there is way to prevent the abuse of power of people in government.
How do we produce one?
First of all, it is so important to have a constitution in place from day one that we need to have an interim constitution ready very quickly. In fact we should have an interim constitution prepared before the referendum to act as a 'guarantee to the people' that Scotland will be an open, democratic nation if they vote for independence. This would define the basics – how elections are to be held, how parliament will work, enshrining the rule of law and so on. This is a largely technical document. There are many respected international 'constitution builders' – general NGOs that support nations in developing their constitutions. Producing an interim constitution based on how democracy and justice in Scotland actually works is a comparatively straightforward task.
Is that not enough?
No. An interim constitution should be as short as possible and contain only the minimum detail. Constitutions are about more than just 'the rules' – they are also a statement of the kind of nation you want to be. They can be short and technical or long and filled with principle, more 'law' or more 'poetry'. It is our choice – but it must be our choice which means it must have the support of the population and in the modern world it is highly desirable that it is actually produced by the population in a participatory process.
How?
Again there is very good international best practice on how to do this. It involves all sorts of practices like Citizens Assemblies, town hall meetings and discussion groups with ways to pull it all together.
How would we manage the process?
An interim constitution would be ready before the referendum as a 'guaranteed minimum'. Then if Scotland votes for independence there would be more than two years to run a large participatory process to find out what people want from their constitution and what they want in their constitution. At the end of this the final constitution should be put to the people in a referendum – if they felt it didn't capture their expectations and rejected it there would then be the interim constitution to fall back on.