Constitution of the Netherlands

The Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, one of two fundamental documents governing the Kingdom alongside the Charter for the Kingdom, was adopted on 24 August 1815 and is the third-oldest constitution still in use. A system of parliamentary democracy was introduced in an 1848 revision made under pressure from that year's wider European revolutions, and the document was substantially rewritten in 1983 to add new civil rights; it is deliberately sober and free of legal or political doctrine, and it bars Dutch courts from testing laws against the constitution, a power reserved to the legislature, so the Netherlands has no constitutional court.