GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON LEGAL HISTORY 1 THOMAS DUVE (ED.) Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches Bram Delbecke Modern Constitutionalism and Legal Transfer: The Political Offence in the French Charte Constitutionnelle (1830) and the Belgian Constitution (1831) | 427 – 459 MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EUROPEAN LEGAL HISTORY ISBN 978-3-944773-00-1 eISBN 978-3-944773-10-0 ISSN 2196-9752 First published in 2014 Published by Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am Main Printed in Germany by epubli, Prinzessinnenstraße 20, 10969 Berlin http://www.epubli.de Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Open Access Publication http://global.rg.mpg.de Published under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/de The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de Copyright © Cover photo by Christiane Birr, Frankfurt am Main Cover design by Elmar Lixenfeld, Frankfurt am Main Recommended citation: Duve, Thomas (ed.) (2014), Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches, Global Perspectives on Legal History, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Open Access Publication, Frankfurt am Main, http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/gplh1 Bram Delbecke Modern Constitutionalism and Legal Transfer: The Political Offence in the French Charte constitu- tionnelle (1830) and the Belgian Constitution (1831) 1. Modern constitutionalism and global legal history In the historiography of public law and the institutional development of Western regimes, ‘constitutionalism’ is undoubtedly one of the leading concepts, as the idea of tempering regal and governmental powers has been present in the Western legal tradition for a long time. Western legal history has a long tradition of charters safeguarding the fundamental rights and liberties of the people, in which the 1215 Magna Carta is the textbook example. The 1689 Glorious Revolution in England even emphasized like no other before the idea of limited monarchy, as the Bill of Rights coined the essence of constitutionalism as an indispensable guarantee for “the true, ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people.” However, the adjective‘modern’isoftenadded,sincenumerousscholarsusetheconcept of modern constitutionalism to describe the global transformation of the institutional framework of the Western world during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. There is a general agreement amongst scholars on the fact that the 1776 American Revolution marked the beginning of a new epoch. As the former colonies threw off the British yoke, the American revolutionaries advocated a political model that was no longer based on a divine order, but on natural law, stating that only the people themselves could render legitimacy to the institutional frame- work of a nation state. Hence, they established a complete reversal of the principles supporting constitutionalism. It is without a doubt that the epoch starting with the outbreak of the American Revolution marked a pivotal era in the history of public law. Opinions differ on what event marked the accomplishment of the rise of modern constitutionalism, but there seems to be a general consensus that it must be placed in the mid-nineteenth century, Modern Constitutionalism and Legal Transfer 427 when various constitutions were promulgated in the aftermath of the 1848 European revolutionary wave. There is a global acceptance that this Sattelzeit, as it was labelled by Reinhart Koselleck,1 can be considered the cradle of modern public law. Both historians and legal scholars have dealt with the rise of modern constitutionalism, as the drawing up of institutional fundamentals in a supremely ranked text still defines thinking about public law. Constitution- alism has even proven to be the most important element in recent history of public law, since all states, except for the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Israel, currently have a written constitution framing the fundamentals of their institutional framework and of the fundamental rights and liberties of their citizens. Hence, according to Karl Loewenstein, it is “safe to say that thewrittenconstitutionhasbecomethemostcommonanduniversally accepted phenomenon of the contemporary state organization.”2 Supra- national organisations such as the European Union are even working on a constitutional text to enhance their legitimacy and Bruce Ackerman has even launched the concept of ‘world constitutionalism.’3 Since 1776, a large corpus of texts of almost 2000 texts has emerged that can be labelled ‘constitutions’, offering scholars and researchers a vast ocean of sources to dive into.4 Hence, one could argue that the rise of modern constitutionalism is one of the pillars of global legal history,5 especially when focusing on the history of public law and the way institutional frameworks have developed worldwide. 1 Koselleck (1970) XV. 2 Loewenstein (1961); Loewenstein (1965). 3 Ackerman (1997). 4 In 1954–1963, the Alfred Metzer Verlag published a bibliographical register in four volumes, with bibliographies of all constitutions and constitutional documents that were hithertoknow(vol.I:Germany,vol.II:Europe,III:America,IV:Africa–Asia–Australia). See: Menzel (1954–1963). There has been no systematic updating of this register, although some supplements were published in Bryde / Hecker (1975) and Hecker (1976). Of course, many constitutional texts can be found nowadays on the internet, e. g. by Wikisource. As a result of the international research project “The Rise of Modern Constitutionalism, 1776–1849” a collection of almost 1500 constitutional documents (including draft bills) of this era has been made available. The project is led by professor Horst Dippel and the texts are available at www.modern-constitutions.de. K.G. Saur Ver- lag / De Gruyter has published several volumes with the annotated editions in hard copy. 5 Crossley (2007); Mazlish / Buultjens (2004); O’Brien (2006). 428 Bram Delbecke However, although the concept of modern constitutionalism seems to be globally accepted amongst scholars, the German legal historian Horst Dippel recently wrote that “our knowledge of its history is next to nothing,”6 as there is little reflection on its rise as a historical phenomenon. Of course, there is a vast literature on the subject of constitutionalism, as the legal scholars and political scientists have turned it into a research field of its own. The books and articles drawing up typological models of constitutions7 or questioning the essence and the meaning of a constitution as a legal or political phenomenon are countless.8 However, when it comes to grasping the historical essentials of the 1776–1849 era, things are less clear than one might expect, says Dippel. While he acknowledges that many scholars have already thoroughly dealt with the matter, he stresses that a fresh perspective is needed, since most comparative studies are based upon the concept of the nation state. Therefore, he advocates a new thinking on constitutional history and on its impact on the Western legal tradition, which surpasses the boundaries of national legal history.9 To grasp the conceptual founda- tions of modern constitutionalism as a political and legal phenomenon on itself, he believes new approaches are needed for a better comprehension of modern constitutionalism as a fundamental concept in the global under- standing of the history of public law. Of course, Dippel’s analysis of the existent historiography is rather bluntly formulated, and one cannot ignore the fact that some legal historians have already taken up the challenge of discussing these fundamentals. Most studies deal with the development of modern constitutionalism by describ- ing the worldwide rise of the idea that the legal framework of every state is founded on a set of supreme legal principles that are consecrated in a text which is hierarchically superior to all other legal norms, and which precede every government. In these matters, they generally focus on the ‘classic’ key elements and principles. It is the sum of what are considered the quintes- sential elements of the public law of a nation, such as popular sovereignty, the different declarations of rights, the idea of limited government, the 6 Dippel (2005) 153. 7 Wheare (1966); Bryce (1905); Loewenstein (1965); Strong (1960); Van Damme (1984). 8 Sartori (1962), Morris-Jones (1965), Maddox (1982), Van Marseveen / Van der Tang (1973); Van der Tang (1998). 9 Dippel (2005) 153–154 and 167–169. Modern Constitutionalism and Legal Transfer 429 constitution as supreme law, separation of powers, governmental account- ability or judiciary independence.10 Hence, they present a rather homoge- neous, sometimes even monolithic image of constitutionalism in the 1776– 1849 era, especially because most studies focus on what ideas were copied from the notorious American and French constitutions. Hence, the histo- riography of modern constitutionalism seems to be predominantly focused on what all constitutions have in common, a search for the greatest common factors of modern constitutionalism.11 2. Local history, constitutional singularities and the political offence However, in order to understand the rise of constitutionalism as a part of global legal history, it could be useful to act upon Thomas Duve’s Gebot einer Priorisierung des Lokalen.12 His compelling suggestion that in order to