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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Le constitutionnalisme octroyé - itinéraire d'un interconstitutionnalisme au XIXe siècle (France, Portugal, Brésil)

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This book could have been a simple history of constituent power in the 19th century, in countries that experienced the return of the king after tumultuous revolutionary episodes. It is, in part; the reader will find in it the legal and political debates on this question during the periods of contestation of national sovereignty in three deliberately selected countries: the Bourbon Restoration for France; the tumultuous monarchy of Portugal, from the granting of the constitutional Charter in 1826 to its fall in 1910; the Empire of Brazil, since the independence. However, we thought it would be useful to propose something else, by shedding new light on the little-studied phenomenon of granted constitutions. Limiting its study to the authoritarian offer of a constitution cannot do justice to the doctrinal and institutional attempts presented here: the “octroi” has rarely been conceived as an end, consecrating and guaranteeing an unchanging constitutional order. On the contrary, it was a question of proposing a stage to complete the Revolution, by allowing the supposed benefits of modern constitutionalism to be enjoyed. This programme cannot be limited to acclimatizing the countries targeted to the "century of constitutions": it was also necessary to reflect on the failure of texts which, although enamelling Europe since the 18th century, have not been able to give satisfaction, generating those sad nominal constitutions already mentioned by Malouet under the National Constituent Assembly of 1789; it was also important to prevent an immoderate and permanent use of constituent power, specific to today's world. We therefore propose, in the form of an itinerary, the history of a conservative constituent power and a conservative constitutionalism, giving pride of place to the moral and divine guarantees of yesteryear, while ensuring that modern values of public law are adapted to the mores of peoples who are not very receptive because of a political education deemed insufficient.