Nowhere today is constitutional law more avidly debated and studied than in the 12 post-Soviet republics known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Drawing on past experience as well as on European, American and Asian models, the constitutions of these countries have a great deal to tell the legal scholar about how the independent states of the post-Cold-War world understand the transition to a market economy. This text contains English translations which accurately present the current (1999) constitutional laws of all 12 CIS countries. The author and translator - himself active as an adviser on constitutional reform in several of these states - has taken care to establish the most authentic sources through an investigation of the existing documents and through personal interviews.