Abstract
Fundamental law is a politicized species of law which is incompatible with a firm separation between law and politics and a strict differentiation between legal reason and political reason. There is a correspondence between fundamental law and the world of the political, a world which, even though advanced through the language of law, shapes the conditions of human existence by establishing structures of authority and obedience and framing what is just or unjust, good or evil, right or wrong. The conflicts that emerge in that world—which at its core concern contestable expressions of fundamental law—are articulated through the medium of constitutional discourse. Those conflicts should not be approached solely as matters of legal interpretation since their settlement necessarily involves political judgment.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For an insightful study of the appropriation of religious sensibility for political purposes see Beiner (2011).
- 3.
de La Boétie (1975), p. 48, who argues that the people, being captivated by the image of the prince, bring about their own ruin: “All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you”. See also Hume, “That politics may be reduced to a science” (1994), pp. 4–15.
- 4.
- 5.
The term seems first to have appeared in Theodore Beza’s work of 1574, Du droit des magistrats (1574), where it was deployed to bolster his argument that magistrates had the right to have the king deposed if he failed to keep within the lawfully-conferred powers under “les loix fondamentales d’un Royaume”. See Kingdon (1970) and Franklin (1969).
- 6.
Francis Bacon used the term in 1596 to refer to the laws of Edward I, which provided the basis of the English state on which it ‘ever since hath principally rested’ and made it clear he did not mean immemorial, customary law: Bacon, Works, 4:6. It has also been noted that in the proceedings of the French Estates Generals of 1588 and 1593, “an idea of fundamental law emerged as positive law, concerned with the framework of government, distinct from ancient customs”: see Thompson (1986), p. 1109.
- 7.
The most influential English exponent of this argument was Sir Edward Coke: see Pocock (1987), pp. 30–69.
- 8.
Tuck (1987), pp. 99–122.
- 9.
See Althusius (1995), p. 93.
- 10.
Althusius (1995), p. 128: the state alone possessed sovereignty, and that sovereignty was located in the organized body of the commonwealth: “This fundamental law is nothing other than certain covenants by which cities and provinces come together and agree to establish and defend one commonwealth. If that consent is withdrawn, the commonwealth ceases to exist.”
- 11.
Gentillet (1968), arguing that fundamental laws are the columns on which the edifice of king and kingdom was erected.
- 12.
Thompson (1986), pp. 1121–1122.
- 13.
Hobbes (1990), p. 44.
- 14.
Rousseau (1962), p. 32.
- 15.
Rousseau (1962), p. 98.
- 16.
Madison et al. (1987), p. 439.
- 17.
Sieyès (2003), pp. 92–162, at 136.
- 18.
Sieyès (2003), p. 136.
- 19.
Sieyès (2003), p. 136.
- 20.
de Maistre (1965), p. 93.
- 21.
This is essentially Carl Schmitt’s argument in Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. See Schmitt (2005), p. 1.
- 22.
Rousseau (1962), p. 50.
- 23.
Elements of this problem can be seen in the debate between Schmitt and Kelsen over the agent that acts as guardian of the Weimar constitution. See Vinx (2015).
- 24.
de Vattel (2008), p. 92.
- 25.
A good example is Coke’s use of the myth of the ancient constitution in seventeenth century England, though this had an earlier parallel claim in François Hotman’s Francogallia (1972).
- 26.
Negretto (2013), p. 1.
- 27.
Durkheim (1984), p. 158.
- 28.
Böckenförde (1991), p. 45.
- 29.
See further Loughlin (2018), pp. 5–7.
- 30.
See Loughlin (2018), p. 141 ss.
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Loughlin, M. (2020). Fundamental Law. In: Nogueira de Brito, M., Pereira Coutinho, L. (eds) The Political Dimension of Constitutional Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38459-3_2
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