A
constitutional crisis is a situation that a legal system's
constitution or other basic principles of operation appear unable to resolve; it often results in a breakdown in the orderly operation of
government. Often, generally speaking, a constitutional crisis is a situation in which separate factions within a
government disagree about the extent to which each of these factions hold
sovereignty. Most commonly, constitutional crises involve some degree of conflict between different
branches of government (e.g.,
executive,
legislature, and/or
judiciary), or between different levels of government in a federal system (e.g.,
state and federal governments).