The paradigmatic (if not the most common) modern procedure for writing a new constitution is the extraordinary, purpose-made Constituent Assembly or the Constitutional Convention. A key characteristic of such bodies is exactly the fact they are not provided for in prior law. Such lack of authorization in this context, of course, is not a defect. It is, as we have seen, an inevitable aspect of constituent authority which must be located outside of the pre-existing legal order. For this reason, eighteenth-century American states rejected the constituent authority of the legislatures and insisted on special purpose constitutional conventions