Between Law and Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-100
Author(s):  
Joel Colón-Ríos
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Power Part ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The French Revolution

Although the origins of the theory of constituent power are generally placed in the French Revolution, the different legal and institutional implications associated with it in late 18th-century France are seldom explored. This chapter engages in such an exploration by focusing on two institutions that were rejected by Sieyès: the imperative mandate and (decision-making) primary assemblies. Part I focuses on Sieyès’ proposals about constitution-making and constitutional reform after 1789. Part II of the chapter examines the role of citizen instructions in late 18th-century France. Sieyès saw citizen instructions as radically inconsistent with the very idea of representation; they were abolished very early in the Revolution. In so doing, it will be shown, French revolutionaries altered in fundamental ways not only the relationship between electors and representatives, but the very nature of what counts as an exercise of constituent power. Part III focuses on the role of primary assemblies during the more radical stages of the French Revolution (namely, 1792–1793). The approach to primary assemblies found in both in the Constitution of 1793, as well as in the Girondin Draft Constitution, reflected in important ways Rousseau’s conception of those entities as a key mechanism of democratic constitutional change. This approach to constitutional change will be contrasted with that of Sieyès, who saw primary assemblies as the site for the exercise of the much more modest ‘commissioning power’, the power to elect those seen as capable of identifying the nation’s constituent will.

The Material Constitution

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-225
Author(s):  
Joel Colón-Ríos
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Legal Limits ◽  
Power Part ◽  
Ordinary Power ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
Special Rule ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the way in which several authors understood the relationship between the material constitution and constituent power, and how that understanding affected their views about the legal limits of the ordinary power of constitutional reform. Part I begins with a brief examination of the historical development of the distinction between the amending and the constituent power. Part II examines the place of the concept of super-legality in Hauriou’s work. For this author, constitutional super-legality includes not only the content of a written constitution protected by a special rule of change, but also the fundamental principles that stand above the constitution itself. Part III introduces Kelsen’s conception of the material constitution which, unlike Hauriou’s, is entirely consistent with the notion of an unlimited amendment power, one which cannot ultimately be bound by eternity clauses and much less by implicit principles. In Part IV, this ‘descriptive’ approach will be contrasted with that of Schmitt. Somewhat counter-intuitively, under Schmitt’s approach, the frequent appeal to an unlimited and unmediated constituent subject leads to the attribution of limited competences to the amending authority. Part V shows how Heller’s conception of the material constitution, although at first sight appearing as a successful synthesis of Kelsen and Schmitt, provides no clear basis for justifying the protection of the material constitution through the legal appeal to an extra-legal constituent authority. Finally, the chapter examines Mortati’s views about the material constitution’s potential role in justifying the imposition of legally enforceable limits on the amending authority.

scholarly journals Church and State during the French Revolution in the Works of J.M. Zakher

2020 ◽  
Vol 162 (6) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
A.A. Kutuzova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
French Society ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

The relations between the church and the state during the revolutionary events in France in the late 18th century were discussed based on the works of Jakov Mikhailovich Zakher (1893–1963), an outstanding Soviet historian. J.M. Zakher’s works cast light on a number of questions: the general position of the church; the frame of people’s mind in the pre-revolutionary period; the emergence and development of the antireligious struggle; the roles played by J. Foucher and A. Schomet, two most prominent public figures of the deсhristianization movement who triggered the most dramatic changes in the spiritual framework of the French society; etc. It was concluded that, despite a whole complex of studies have been performed on the French Revolution, the works of J.M. Zakher provide an important systematic coverage of the state-church relations in France during the 18th century. His legacy clearly preserves the “École russe” traditions, such as thoroughness, scrupulousness and attention to details, as well as the desire to create a vivid and comprehensive picture of the past.

Yellow fever: populist pangs in France

Soundings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (72) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Gabriel Bristow
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Police Violence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The French Revolution

A discussion of the recent gilets jaunes revolt in France, reflecting on the dynamics of contemporary populist social movements. Starting with the causes of the uprising - underlying and immediate - the article goes on to explore the democratic demands of the movement, the role of the historical imaginary of the French Revolution, the relationship between the gilets jaunes and France's banlieues, and the predominance of police violence.

scholarly journals Apocalyptics of revolution and self-sacrifice in the poem “Lieutenant Schmidt” by B. L. Pasternak

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 202-210
Author(s):  
Oksana A. Maltseva
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Characteristic Features

The paper investigates the structure and significance of a mythopoetic component in the poem “Lieutenant Schmidt” (1926–1927) by B. Pasternak, revealing that mythopoetics contributes to the expression of the author’s Christian views on the events of the Russian revolution of 1905–1907. It depicts the Sevastopol Uprising as a kind of repetition of the tragic history of capture of Kyiv by Mongols-Tatars in the 13th century, as well as the represents bloody realities of the Great French Revolution of the late 18th century, since these events resulted from the fact that society neglected the spiritual and moral foundations of its existence. According to the author the images, arising in the subtext, the images of the Church of the Tithes destroyed in 1240, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and the October Manifesto (1905), not implemented in time, are the embodiments of such foundations. At the same time, the study emphasizes the significance of a philistine appearance of the “sleeping” fortress-city of Sevastopol. The author draws attention to the fact that the leitmotif of representing the spiritual sleep, lying and violence is the image of the rampant demonic force which eventually engulfed both warring parties. As she argues, there is, however, an antagonistic spiritual origin of this element in the poem — it is exactly in the image of Lieutenant Schmidt who embodies the idea of evangelical self-sacrifice in the era of violence and lack of spirituality. The paper analyzes the nature of internal conflict experienced by the hero, as well as the dynamics of the plot lines connected with him and highlights the role of biblical, historical and literary allusions. The author concludes that the work under study reveals characteristic features of a historical and mythological poem.

Dilettantismus oder „Nebenwerk“?

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-499
Author(s):  
Martin Mulsow
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Main Activity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Part Time Work

Dilettantism or “Nebenwerk”? A Gotha Proposal on the Position of Science at the Courts in the Late 18th Century This essay discusses the contents of a presumably collective program that Gotha intellectuals published in 1776. In the text under study, “Von der spielenden Gelehrsamkeit”, they seek to legitimate their scientific and scholarly part-time work in addition to their employment as court officials or professionals in the ducal residence. The text is polyphonious and seems to be based on compromises between different authors. Accordingly, it does not present a consistent argument. For the historian, the consistency of the text is less relevant than what it reveals about the precarious status of part-time science and how it was viewed by contemporaries. The authors of the proposal argue that a self-confident form of patriotism – a patriotism that is related to the princely territory – and the emphasis on practical applications could help to prevent science and scholarship from sliding into pedantic specialization. For the authors, however, this did not mean rejecting the micrology, the collection of seemingly insignificant individual observations. On the contrary: micrology should be possible precisely because the part-time scholars – through their work for the principality at court – would never lose sight of the big picture. In the previous research discussion about the role of dilettantism in the genesis of science, the question of the relationship between the main activity at court and the secondary activity, the Nebenwerk, as a scientist has so far been neglected. The text under discussion therefore throws an important light on the coupling attempts that have been made here between different social subsystems.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Stefan George ◽  
German States ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
The French Revolution

The Prologue proceeds from the common understanding that Philhellenism was constitutive of the cultural identity of the German Bildungsbürgertum since the end of the 18th century until the 1970s or even the 1980s – i.e. between the times of the French Revolution (1789) and the reunification of the two German states in 1989. This common understanding usually is connected to German poets and writers from Winckelmann to Stefan George (Eliza Butler) or explained with regard to the development of Altertumswissenschaften (Martin Bernal and Suzanne Marchand), albeit with different emphases. The link between Philhellenism and theatromania, epitomized in performances of Greek tragedies since 1800 has so far remained absent from this discussion. Therefore, in this study, the focus will shift to the relationship between performances of Greek tragedies and the cultural identity of the German Bildungsbürgertum. It thus attempts to understand tragedy’s endurance on German stages during the last 200 years.

Sieyès via Rousseau

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-76
Author(s):  
Joel Colón-Ríos
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
General Will ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Legislative Power ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Legal Force

This chapter traces the gradual emergence of the distinction between the constituted and the constituent power in the work of Sieyès, using Rousseau as the main source of comparison. It examines how Sieyès constructed constituent power as an extra-legal force and identifies the key juridical implications of his views. Part I briefly considers some uses of the term ‘constituent power’ before Sieyès and outside the context of the French Revolution. Part II examines Sieyès’ early pamphlets, where he puts forward his initial understanding of the power to be exercised by the nation’s representatives in the Estates-General. This approach, it will be seen in Part III, led him to propose the creation of a supreme constitution that ensured that the (representative) law-making power acted consistently with the general will. Part IV of the chapter focuses on Sieyès’ main published work, What is the Third Estate?, which contains a more developed formulation of the distinction between constituent and constituted power, as well as about the nature of representation. In that work, one can also see a transformation of Sieyès’ conception of the legislative power, one that brought him further than ever away from Rousseau. Finally, the chapter considers the role of extra-ordinary representatives in Sieyès’ conception of constitution-making and constitutional reform.

2. Why it happened

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
William Doyle
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Single Event ◽  
French Society ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The French Revolution

Describing why the French Revolution happened poses challenges. The French Revolution was not a single event; it was a series of developments that stretched over a number of years beginning between 1787 and 1789. ‘Why it happened’ attempts to outline the causes of the French Revolution by looking at the events leading up to the end of the 1780s. This was a period of uncertainty and confusion. What role did the monarchy have in causing the initial disquiet? Were the seeds of disorder already present in French society in the late 18th century? How important was France’s financial difficulties in causing a crisis?

1. Echoes

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
William Doyle
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
Western World ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
19Th Century Literature ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Century Literature ◽  
The French Revolution

‘Echoes’ examines the legacy of the French Revolution in the Western world through the lens of late 18th-century and 19th-century literature and culture. It considers writing by Edmund Burke and Thomas Carlyle, but it is Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859) that offers the most influential image that posterity has of the French Revolution. It took as its main theme the contrast between violent Paris and tranquil London. The images of this book define the French Revolution for many, and were reinforced elsewhere, for example in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905). Despite enjoying all the romance of the French Revolution in books and plays, did people really know what caused it?

The Concept of the ‘Living Constitution’ in Russian Constitutional Theory and Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 416-445
Author(s):  
Caroline von Gall
Keyword(s):  
Direct Effect ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Margin Of Appreciation

Abstract In discussing the concept of the ‘living constitution’ in Russian constitutional theory and practice, this paper shows that the Russian concept of the living constitution differs from U.S. or European approaches to evolutive interpretation. The Russian concept has its roots in Soviet and pre-revolutionary Russian constitutional thinking. It reduces the normative power of the Constitution but allows an interpretation according to changing social conditions and gives the legislator a broad margin of appreciation. Whereas the 1993 Russian constitutional reform had been regarded as a paradigm shift with the intention to break with the past by declaring that the Constitution shall have supreme judicial force and direct effect, the paper also gives answers to the complexity of constitutional change and legal transplants and the role of constitutional theory and practice for the functioning of the current authoritarian regime in Russia.

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