About this edition

The source

The text on this site is taken from the chapter documents of the Constitution of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas published by the Government of The Bahamas: one document for each of the ten chapters, and one for the citation, commencement and construction provisions of The Bahamas Independence Order 1973, to which the Constitution is scheduled. The Constitution came into operation on 10 July 1973.

The documents were converted to text and then re-assembled into chapters, parts and articles. The article titles are the marginal notes printed beside each article in the source. Where a note was broken across pages or displaced in the source, it was matched to its article by hand.

What was changed

The wording is reproduced as printed, including slips of the pen in the source documents. A few presentational changes were made so the text reads well on a screen:

• Chapter titles are set in title case rather than capitals.
• Footnote markers such as “(a)” after the titles of Acts were removed, because the footnotes they refer to are not printed in the source documents.
• In Chapter VIII the source prints “Part IV” twice. The second, Miscellaneous, is shown as Part VII, which is its place in the sequence.
• In Chapter VII the heading “Court or Appeal” is shown as “Court of Appeal”.
• Hyphenated words broken across lines in the source were rejoined.

Using the text

Every article has its own page, for example Article 15, and can also be reached within its chapter, for example Chapter III, Article 15. The search covers the full text of every article and of the Independence Order.

This site is an aid to reading and is not legal advice. For any formal purpose, consult the official publication of the Government of The Bahamas.