Danish June Constitution of 1849

The June Constitution of 1849, Denmark's first democratic constitution, was adopted by the Estates on 25 May 1849 and signed into law by King Frederick VII on 5 June 1849, bringing an end to nearly two centuries of Danish absolute monarchy under the 1665 Lex Regia. It created a bicameral parliament, the Rigsdag, made up of the Landsting and the Folketing, extended the vote to roughly fifteen percent of the population, and guaranteed rights including protection from arbitrary arrest, private property and freedom of speech. Drafted with the Norwegian constitution of 1814 and the Belgian constitution among its models, it left the king as a comparatively weak constitutional monarch dependent on his ministers for advice and on parliament to pass legislation. Its signing is still marked every year as Denmark's Constitution Day. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/