Books like The Constitution of the United States of America

It might seem odd that an Australian would list this—and if you look at the shelves I have it on, Americans may perceive one apparent inconsistency. Folks, if you see 'odd' or 'inconsistent', you don't know the full story.Because Britain had (and has) no written constitution, the Australian constitutional conventions needed to look closely at other examples, and high on their list was the US Constitution.To be blunt, Australia's founding fathers (no women were allowed in) followed the US Constitution down an alley, mugged it, took its pocket contents, its hat and its shoes, turned them inside out, and claimed them as their own.In some cases, they went the other way, as in the assignment of residual powers, but they drew on the experiences of the US in making their decisions.The Australians were also canny about specifying the taking of censuses, knowing that the US census system was faltering under the huge population growth of the 1890s, not knowing that Herman Hollerith had invented the device that used to be a Hollerith card, but is now referred to as the IBM card, and that made for faster processing.So just as our nation's founding fathers gleaned ideas, we can garner interest from it — if we know how to read it.Not bad thinking and writing in it, either.