Two senses of "constitutional"

On a related note, "constitutional" can be used in two different ways, which may get a bit confused in discussions like the previous one. On the one hand, it can mean simply "permitted by the set of norms that govern what is and what is not legitimate political action," whatever those may be; on the other, it can refer to a polity where the rule of law holds not merely with respect to individual exercises of authority, but even over questions of what is properly a matter of state action at all. There is nothing paradoxical, then, is saying *both* that X policy is constitutional (in the first sense), and yet demonstrates our polity to be a less constitutional one (in the second sense) than some other polity Y. And indeed, I think it fair to say that states with large, power-projecting militaries, habits of using them, and the concomitant attitude towards executive discretion, are in fact *less constitutional* than those without them, no matter how strictly the former type adheres to their particular governmental charters. This is a bit like Walter Murphy's distinction between "constitutionism" and "constitutionalism", though I'm not sure I quite like his way of drawing the lines.