The Demise of the French Constitution of 1875

Karl Loewenstein

American Political Science Review, 1940, vol. 34, issue 5, 867-895

Abstract: French constitutional theory, on the basis of extensive national experience, distinguishes between revolutions from below—elementary ground-swells among the masses which sweep irresistibly over the nation and destroy all constitutional obstacles—on the one hand, and revolutions from above, by coup d'état of a constituted organ, either a legislative body or a governmental agency, on the other hand. In the latter case, an effort is made to connect the new régime with the preceding order by what constitutional ropes, or even threads, are still available. This habit has created, in spite of frequent upheavals in the first half of French constitutional life since 1789, a strong sense of constitutional tradition and legal conservatism.The events of July, 1940, may amount to a full-fledged revolution, but not a revolution in the common sense of the word, that is, a ground-swell rising from below. When France adopted the authoritarian form of government, no fascist mass party, today the indispensable prerequisite of popular upheavals, was in existence. It was a coup d'état from above, a deliberate act of the defeated military leaders and their political advisers—in short, a skillfully engineered political stratagem. The politicians among the group must have been well aware of the character of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, capable of being abrogated only by a legislative act of equal rank.

Date: 1940
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