The current Iowa Constitution was narrowly approved at a referendum in August, 1857. The Constitution came into effect on September 3, 1857. Iowa’s Constitution has been amended 46 times since that time. It is now one of the older state constitutions in America. The constitution consists of a Preamble and 12 Articles.
The 1857 constitution provides for the three branches, the executive, legislature and judiciary. Moreover, it expressly prohibits any branch from exercising a function of the other. Although the federal constitution keeps the branches separate, it does not explicitly state that they are separate.
Under Article X, the ways in which the Iowa constitution can be changed are:
- Legislatively-referred constitutional amendments, and
- Constitutional conventions