The longest constitution of any country in the world belongs to India, which is appropriately the world’s most populous country. It stands at 145,000 words – a bit longer than Homer’s Odyssey in the original Greek, and over twice the length of the second longest national constitution, Nigeria’s. As a point of comparison, the United States constitution, arguably the world’s oldest active written constitution,¹ is only around 7,500 words including amendments.

But there’s another active constitution even longer than India’s, though it’s not for an independent country. Instead, it somehow belongs to the US state of Alabama.

Coming in at 369,380 words, Alabama’s constitution is just barely longer than Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina with “only” about 349,000.² It’s also right about half the length of the Bible (a bit over or under depending on the edition), and more than 3 times as long as the Constitution of the State of Texas, the second longest of any US state.

And somehow, this is the shortened version. In 2022, the state voted to “recodify” the existing 1901 constitution, removing redundant and overturned provisions, changing old racist wording, and organizing it into more coherent sections.³ Before 2022, the constitution was over 400,000 words. There may perhaps be a longer sub-national constitution somewhere in the world, but the Alabama Bar Association couldn’t find one.

So what’s actually written in there? If go and look at the Alabama state constitution itself (conveniently available on Wikisource⁴ or the state government website⁵), you’ll find that it’s full of provisions that only apply to specific local governments. This starts as early as Article II section 41, declaring that county governments can only move their county seat according to a vote of the people, but Shelby County specifically can only move its county seat according to a vote of the people as provided for in a specific Shelby County law from 1899.

And it only gets worse from there. There’s section 93.01 authorizing the government to promote the catfish industry using funds from a fee on catfish feed. There’s section 213.07 authorizing a 1964 bond sale to support a ship canal in Mobile Harbor. There’s section 266.3 that seems to just be the by-laws of the Board of Trustees of Auburn University, which is 1,257 words all by itself – more words than Article II of the US constitution uses to describe the entire executive branch.⁶ In total, about 70% of the state constitution’s amendments apply only to specific local governments.

Catfish: Apparently constitutionally important

Most states don’t have all that stuff in their constitution. Why does Alabama? According to the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA),⁷ the 1901 state constitution was meant to severely restrict the power of local governments within the state. The legislature at the time was controlled by the so-called “redeemers”. These were southern Democrats who rolled back the political rights for black Alabamans that had been established during the Reconstruction Era after the civil war – and also destroyed the rights of many poor white Alabamans in the process.⁸ The restrictive constitution ensured that cities and counties could do little to fight the state legislature during this process.

Even after the end of legal segregation, and the 2022 vote, Alabama’s top-down system remains in effect. PARCA says this system “blurs the lines of accountability when things go wrong” points out that the state also has about 36,000 other laws affecting specific localities. As such, PARCA is still pushing for further reform.

So if Alabama’s constitutional reformers get their wish, the state may finally shed its dubious honor of having (probably) the world’s longest constitution. But hey, at least it’ll still be first in the alphabet.