The US Constitution is unusually short because it's written on the principle of English common law. In traditional common law, the written law is very short and very general. Then, as complications come up, the courts interpret it and precedent is applied. This is opposed to more statutory systems where you try to write a law as specifically as possible and the courts don't have as much power to decide "case law".
44 pages of the document are the rules themselves (17 rules), there's about 3 pages of addendum, and then over 50 pages of summarized interpretation (the equivalent of case law). The pages themselves are not very dense.
Another famous example of common law is "The Laws of the Game", the official rulebook of association football (soccer): http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/federation/81/4...
44 pages of the document are the rules themselves (17 rules), there's about 3 pages of addendum, and then over 50 pages of summarized interpretation (the equivalent of case law). The pages themselves are not very dense.