Is This Pamphlet Illegal?

Simplico:  The Constitutional Convention has voted to make this pamphlet illegal, isn't that sufficient?

Your Pamphleteer:  And a bar of drunks voted to make it legal, is that sufficient to make it legal?

Simplico:  Well, of course not!

Your Pamphleteer:  And why not?

Simplico:  They can't make laws. They were just saying what they wanted to be true.

Your Pamphleteer:  Yes, dear Simplico, exactly. Something can only be a law if someone with both the power and right to make laws created it. Otherwise it's just an opinion.

Simplico:  But doesn't the Constitutional Convention have the right to make laws?

Your Pamphleteer:  Not in generality. They were set a very specific task, the task of creating a constitution. That's a specific sort of law, one that would -- and here I quote the convention's president -- "establish how Cheliax shall be governed – how new laws are made, the function of the courts, the workings of all the organs of the state. More importantly, it will establish your rights against the depredations of that state."

Does the thing the convention voted for meet that definition? Does it say anything about how to make laws, how the courts should function, set the workings of the various organs of the state, or establish the rights of subjects? 

Simplico:  Well, no, it doesn't do any of those things.

Your Pamphleteer:  Then it isn't a constitution, and so it isn't in their power to make it a law. After all, when the Queen sets up an official to collect taxes from docking ships, that doesn't give the official the power to impress peasants to repair a road, or order a military unit to clear out bandits from the woods. And when the Queen sets up a Constitutional Convention, that gives it the power and right to write a constitution, not to make any and all laws that it happens to think are a good idea.

Simplico:  Well, what if they made a constitution that said the convention could write any laws it liked?

Your Pamphleteer:  Then they'd have the power and right to start making ordinary laws. But they'd have to do that first, and they didn't.

Simplico:  So this pamphlet is legal?

Your Pamphleteer:  For the moment, dear Simplico, for the moment.