The

Greek Constitution The Constitution of Greece ( el, Σύνταγμα της Ελλάδας, Syntagma tis Elladas) was created by the Fifth Revisionary Parliament of the Hellenes in 1974, after the fall of the Greek military junta and the start of the Third Hellen ...

of 1827 was signed and ratified in June 1827 by the

Third National Assembly at Troezen The Third Greek National Assembly at Troezen ( el, Γʹ Εθνοσυνέλευση της Τροιζήνας) was convened during the latter stages of the Greek Revolution. Convening of the Assembly The long-delayed Third National Assembly was i ...

during the latter stages of the

Greek War of Independence The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. The Greeks were later assisted by ...

and represented the first major step towards realizing a centralised system of Government, pooling together some of the more disparate elements of the liberation struggle. The Third National Assembly initially convened in Piada (now

Nea Epidavros Nea Epidavros ( gr, Νέα Επίδαυρος, ) also written Nea Epidaurus is a village in Argolis regional unit, Greece. It is located in the east of Argolis peninsula, 40 km east of Nafplio. Epidavros is mainly known for First National Ass ...

) in 1826 and subsequently in

Troezen Troezen (; ancient Greek: Τροιζήν, modern Greek: Τροιζήνα ) is a small town and a former municipality in the northeastern Peloponnese, Greece, on the Argolid Peninsula. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the munic ...

in 1827. After unanimously electing

John Capodistria Count Ioannis Antonios Kapodistrias (10 or 11 February 1776 – 9 October 1831), sometimes anglicized as John Capodistrias ( el, Κόμης Ιωάννης Αντώνιος Καποδίστριας, Komis Ioannis Antonios Kapodistrias; russian: � ...

as Governor of Greece for a seven-year term, it voted for the ''Political Constitution of Greece''. The Assembly wanted to give the country a stable government, modeled on democratic and liberal ideas, and for this reason it declared for the first time the principle of popular sovereignty: ''"Sovereignty lies with the people; every power derives from the people and exists for the people"''. This key democratic principle was repeated in all the Greek Constitutions after 1864.

Features

The Constitution consisted of 150 articles. It established a strict

separation of powers Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typic ...

, vesting the executive power to the Governor and assigning to the body of the representatives of the people, named Vouli, the legislative power. The Governor only had a suspending veto on the bills, and he lacked the right to dissolve the Parliament. He was 'inviolable', while the ''Secretaries of the State'', in other words the Ministers, assumed the responsibility for his public actions (thus introducing into the text of the 1827 Constitution the first elements of the so-called 'parliamentary principle'). The Constitution was also comparatively developed in its approach to human rights for the time.

Definition of Greekness

Paragraph 6 provided a definition of who is to be considered a Greek:Greek Constitution 1827, scanned original from the Library of the Parliament of the Hellenes
/ref> *Those natives of Greece who believe in Christ *Those under Ottoman yoke who believe in Christ and come to Greek territory to fight for it or to live in it *Those born in any country who have a Greek father *Those, either natives or not, as well as their children, who were citizens of another state before the publication of this constitution and come to Greece and take the Greek Oath *Those aliens who shall come and be naturalised as citizens (criteria and procedure regulated in paragraphs 30–35) As a formal sign of naturalisation, the Constitution includes the so-called Greek Oath: "I swear in the name of the All-Highest and of the fatherland to always come to the assistance of the freedom and well-being of my nation, sacrificing for it even my life, if the need should arise. Further I swear to submit to the laws of my fatherland, to respect the rights of my co-citizens, and to fulfill without fail the obligations of a citizen."

References

External links

Scanned original of the 1827 Constitution (in Greek)
{{Constitution of Greece 1827 in law 1827 in Greece 1827 documents June 1827 events Constitution of Greece