Symbolic law? I thought that the Constitution was moribund and the current structure, which approval or disapproval was agreed to be binding, is a treaty? So it's a constitution only when it's a treaty and when it's approval is supposed to be unanimous unless its not unanimous then kick out the dissenters? I think maybe the various US consulates should provide abridged copies of the Federalist and Anti-federalist arguments. Not to serve as a guide on how to define the powers of the EU but rather to simply argue out the merits or lack of them in front of the public.

I would surely hate to see what then is regarded a long version of the Treaty of Lisbon considering its currently at 12,800 words and 70 articles. While the original US Consitution was published on four pages, the last being signatures. The Bill of Rights, published in 1791, added one page to the total. Its current iteration is at 4,400 words with seven articles and 27 amendments. I can carry a pocket version, which I also give all my students on a yearly basis, that does not leave a mark on my trousers unlike say a Copenhagen tin.

There are literally dozens of American sources, public and private, where copies of the Constitution can be gotten for free. But as an experiment I had some of my students attempt to get a copy of the Treaty of Lisbon and discovered two things, the first in that it was only available in English and French (not just in English) and second, the cost of shipping was prohibitive because the Washington office of the European Commission does not have any copies of either the Treaty or the previous Constitution either to give away or for sale. We had to order it from London.

I didn't say that that the Treaty of Lisbon was only available in those two languages but that the English text we requested also came with a French translation. And, here I'll defer to others, that appears the only way it came at that time. That is in the desired language mated with a French translation which ends up doubling the size of the document and doubling the cost of mailing. And is extremely doubtful usage for a classroom of 15 year olds. Most high schools in the US, for obvious reasons, do not allow downloads from overseas and often do not allow cookies.

The point I was trying to make is that it seems understandable that when given the choice most Europeans seem to reject the Treaty because of its unknown qualities and length. The size and obscurity of the Treaty and its source, the Constitution, more resemble a list of regulations rather than a document defining the relationship of the citizens to the state.

Not really, I was simply trying to show the differences between a constitution that was approved by the citizens because that step was too important to leave to the elites and a constitution that was approved by the elites because it was too important to leave to the citizens. They noticed quickly that the EU Constitution or Treaty was primarily a set regulations while the American Constitution was a document that defined and recognized the compact between the citizens and the government and did not refer to agricultural policy or fishery quotas.