Notes


1. The most celebrated case of the constitution of a state not, for the most part,
 being embodied in a document is, of course, the United Kingdom. Many of the
 rules by which that state is governed take the form of conventions, customs, and
 practices. See for example, Wade and Phillips, Constitutional and
 Administrative Law (London: ELBS and Longman Group Ltd, 1978).

 2. However, experience has taught that, in practice the achievement of a status of
 independence has not, in the case of Commonwealth Caribbean states,
 generally meant the introduction of "creative and innovative" changes in their
 constitutions. See Harold A. Lutchman, "An Experiment That Failed: Issues
 and Problems of Constitutional Change and Reform in Guyana" (1992), 1
 mimeo. Per contra the general situation in Africa among former colonies after the
 achievement of their independence.

3. See generally Gordon K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (New
 York: Monthly Review Press, 1968) and Morley Ayearst, The British West Indies:
 The Search for Self-Government (New York: New York University Press, 1960).

4. The general features of American practice are admirably set out and analyzed in
 Paul Leary, The Political Status of the United States Virgin Islands (Lecture
 Presented at the University of St. Martin, Netherlands Antilles, February 24,
 1992), 1-6, and by the same author, "Our Political Status", The Daily News
 Supplement, March 26, 1992, 55. On the subject of agitation for change, see
 generally William Boyer, America's Virgin Islands: A History of Human Rights
 and Wrongs (Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), Part II.

5. See, for example, Paul M. Leary, Commentary: Section V (Political Status
 Documents).

6. Among the British colonies in this respect are Montserrat, Anguilla, the British
 Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Bermuda.

7. Leary, The Political Status of the United States Virgin Islands.

8. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago this has taken the form of providing Tobago
 with an elected assembly ostensibly with a measure of autonomy see, for
 example, Act No. 37 of 1980 (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago). In
 St. Christopher and Nevis, notwithstanding the small size of that state, its
 constitution, to some extent, embodies the federal principle see generally Ihe
 Saint Christopher Nevis Constitution Order 1983 (No. 881) (HMSO, London,
 1983) and in particular, Chapter X of the constitution appended thereto.