Unlike lower-order law, which is binding because enforced from above, consititutional law, in a democratic state, is a law that the people imposes on itself.
http://books.google.com.ph/books?id=3cbDSZ-oJjcC&pg=PA124&lp...

OFT - neither the Federalist Papers, nor any State Constitution, are a better guide than the text of the Constitution itself. The former are - at best - interpretive tools that can supplement the text of the Constitution, and the latter are explicitly held to be of a lower-order law than the Federal Constitution.
http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2009/07/sotomayor-questio...

This power is derived, as is evident in canonical sources such as Hamilton’s FEDERALIST NO. 78 and Marshall’s opinion in MARBURY, from principles implicit in Montesquieu’s basic conception of the separation of powers—i.e, the equality of the judicial branch with the executive and legislature in conjunction with the institutional obligation of courts under the separation of powers “to say what the law is” and thus to resolve conflicts between higher- and lower-order law by declaring the latter invalid.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/Carrese90...

Actors in the real world, solving real legal problems, cannot resort in each
instance, to contemplation of the self-evident basic norm that is the source
of all lower order law.68 Put another way, by the time we actually use the law
(as opposed to contemplating its ultimate origin), we can attach a name,
‘‘law,’’ to that set of authorized norms the coercive power of the state will
enforce.69
http://lch.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/3/1/82.pdf

THE AMBIGUITY OF LEGAL DREAMS: A COMMUNITARIAN DEFENSE OF JUDICIAL ...
ni JA GARDNER - 1993 -
Only when the lower-order law provides some basis for the challenged action ...... For most individuals, lower-order law is first and foremost a form of ...
https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/.../app?... - United States -