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The legal implications of the circulation of ideas and constitutional notions become more evident for the first time at the interface of legal and historical sciences. After the emergence of the American Constitution (1787), the genesis of constitutional semantics was accompanied by an immense public interest and participation in Continental-Europe. Against this backdrop, the interplay of linked paradigms reveals the European constitutionalism as a history of movements. ReConFort concentrates on the public “discourses” by selecting five constitutional case studies, i.e. the Polish Sejm (1788-1792), the Spanish Cortes (1812), the Belgian National Congress (1830-1831), the Frankfurt Parliament (1848-1849) and the Italian Parlamento Subalpino (1861). The reconsidering of the constitutional processes of the late 18th and 19th centuries is based on the exploration of mainly still unknown primary sources (cross-border correspondences and publicist activities of major constitutional protagonists (including exile literature) and regional/national and cross-border constitutional journalism in leading public media). The interconnected synchronic and diachronic comparative approach of ReConFort sheds light on the complex mechanisms of constitutional formation and their generalisation. This is meant to contribute to the contemporary overall debate about the future of the EU integration process. On the basis of so far unknown historical sources, ReConFort achieved the following new results beyond the state-of-the-art. National sovereignty in the debates around the Polish Great Sejm is enriched by the old aristocratic understanding of the Nation as one of the Polish noblemen’ and the inaccuracies in its opening towards a general political body (cf. constitutional rank of the municipal law of April 18, 1791) result in a remarkable procedural openness to the Polish May Constitution 1791. National sovereignty in the Spanish Cádiz Constitution 1812 is connected to the anti-Napoleonic context of the constitutional process. The Cádiz’ liberal understanding is influenced by and combines the supra-legal limitations for the royal government with the historical legitimization of the Cádiz constitution by the old fundamental laws of the Monarchy. In Belgium, a parliament took over the task of drafting a constitution after the Revolution of 1830, leaving the soon-to-be-appointed King only the role of “pouvoir constitué”. In the octroi of the Piedmontese Statuto Albertino 1848, the constituent act of granting the fundamental law was communicated to maintain the plenitudo potestatis of the absolute monarchy, to rationalize the old royal sacredness. The Italian coincidence of the monarchical sovereignty in its absoluteness with the granting of the Albertine Statute was meant to avoid any scope for the differentiation between pouvoir constituant and pouvoir constitué. The improvised parliamentarism in the Frankfurt National Assembly on the basis of a ‘constitutionalist’ constitution corresponds with the openness of the “Sovereignty of the Nation” whereby Heinrich von Gagern inaugurated the Paulskirchen-assembly. This avowal to the singular and unlimited pouvoir constituant of a non-existing German nation does not make sense as a programmatic claim to self-government, but reflects the indecisiveness of the post-kantian liberalism between monarchical and popular sovereignty. It avoided the open commitment to popular sovereignty and thus the conflict with the monarchy, enabling a consensual framework between imperial government and parliamentary majority. These achievements will be published within an innovative comparative context as an open access volume 'ReConFort I: National Sovereignty' with Springer. The set of key passages 'national sovereignty/constituent sovereignty', ‘precedence of constitution’, ‘judiciary as constituted power’ and ‘justiciability of politics’ together with the remotely-based working organization of the international post-doc group enables ReConFort to combine comparative constitutional history and transfer history, which opens up a framework to establish European constitutional models attractive for Arabic and Asiatic neighbors for the current challenges in the Middle East and North Africa. |
