This chapter explains that before determining how to construct the mechanisms of government in a constitution, one first has to determine what value system should underpin the document. A constitution, like any law, is only so good as the ethical values that are its foundation. The chapter then examines the concepts of the rule of law and constitutionalism, before explaining that while broad discussion of values was conspicuous by its absence from the constitutional conventions of the 1890s, the Commonwealth Constitution nevertheless reflects by default the values of that time, which in jurisprudential terms are those of democratic positivism. In contrast to that, the chapter argues that a value-system based on human dignity, and in particular the ideas of Kant and Rawls, should underpin the constitution. These values form the framework of the remainder of the book.