Constitutional history

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Constitutional history is the area of historical study covering both

written constitutions and uncodified constitutions, and became an academic discipline during the 19th century. The Oxford Companion to Law (1980) defined it as the study of the "origins, evolution and historical development" of the constitution of a community.[1]

The English term is attributed to Henry Hallam, in his 1827 work The Constitutional History of England.[2] It overlaps legal history and political history. For uncodified constitutions, the status of documents seen as contributing to the formation of a constitution has an aspect of diplomatics.

By the beginning of the 20th century, constitutional history, associated strongly with the "Victorian manner" in historiography, had come under criticism that questioned its relevance.[3] Both before and after the period of so-called "traditional constitutional history" in the English-speaking world, its themes in political history have been seriously contested.

See Category:Constitutional history.

Overview of national constitutional histories

European background

In the European tradition, Pocock in his book on the ancient constitution of England argued a common pattern, seen in François Hotman, a French lawyer of the 16th century, of valuing customary law, in tension with a code of law, and taking support for the customary to the point of creating a "historical myth" around it. Historical priority had political consequences for monarchy.[4]

The status of monarchy in Europe played a large part in its constitutional history until the end of

British monarchy which is part of an uncodified constitution.[5] Mark Mazower states that "Most of the new constitutions began by stressing their democratic, national and republican character."[6]

Category:Constitutional history of Austria
Main article: Constitutional history of Greece
Main article: History of the constitution of the United Kingdom

North American constitutions

The constitution of the United States, as a historical research area, was considered to be in decline by Menard in 1971, citing also

individual rights, and in tension with critical legal studies and its approach to legal history.[9] Lewis Henry LaRue, from the side of critical legal studies, in 1987 defended the proposition that constitutional law should be studied in the context of constitutional history.[10]

Category:Constitutional history of the United States
Main article: Constitutional history of Canada
Main article: History of the United States Constitution

Constitutional courts

Many nations have a constitutional court deciding matters of constitutional law. The force of judgements in such a court may be erga omnes, in other words applying broadly, rather than just to the case in question.[11] Theodore Y. Blumoff writing of the Supreme Court of the United States stated that "Through its decisions and resulting precedents, the Court makes history as it decides it."[12]

Main article: Constitutional court

Ancient Greece and Rome

The political history of

patricians, was a deliberative assembly, while the assemblies of the plebeians were not.[14]

Gracchi and their reforms.[16]

Category:Ancient Greek constitutions
Main article: History of the Roman Constitution

Medieval Christendom

From the

Latin Christendom as a polity, for example in the Crusades. The secular constitution of the Holy Roman Empire was uncodified. Its background was studied in depth in the 19th century by Georg Waitz, considered the effective founder of the German Verfassungsgeschichte, as part of legal history. His eight-volume work Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte covered the period from the 9th to 12th centuries. The school of Waitz and Heinrich Brunner was later challenged by the "new constitutional history" of Theodor Mayer (de:Theodor Mayer (Historiker)), Otto Brunner and Walter Schlesinger.[17]

The three-volume Constitutional History of England (1874–78) by

witangemot and free assemblies.[19]

Ottonian period Empire, on the grounds that it assumed without sufficient justification that such institutions existed in an operational sense.[20] He also argued that parallels drawn between Germany and Anglo-Saxon England of the tenth century were ultimately quite misleading.[21] Timothy Reuter in 2002 stated in this context that "constitutional history in the old style has clearly gone out of fashion."[22]

Main article: Legal history of the Catholic Church
Main article: Feudalism in the Holy Roman Empire

Whig history and constitutional history in the university

According to the final volume of The Cambridge Modern History (1910), Hallam's Constitutional History of England of 1827 contains the "authoritative Whig presentation of modern English history", and it "immediately took its place as a textbook in the Universities". The context is a contrast with the conservative History of Europe of Archibald Alison, which pointed to the French Revolution and the dangers of political change.[23]

From the 1860s there were in the English-speaking world professors of constitutional history, with

Columbia College Law School in the US from 1865.[25] He lectured on The Rise of Our Constitution. He recommended reading for the Bill of Rights 1689, which he took to be foundational for the US Constitution, from Edward Shepherd Creasy's Rise and Progress of the English Constitution, then Hallam's book, then from an annotated edition of Jean-Louis de Lolme's work on the English constitution, before the legal works of William Blackstone and others.[26]

With the work of Stubbs, succeeded by

Second British Empire expanded, but its history initially was kept separate. The Whigs of the 18th century had often been supporters of American independence. Radicals of the 19th century distrusted imperial thinking.[28]

In the twentieth century, Gardiner's approach was attacked by Roland Greene Usher (1880–1957), and both Herbert Butterfield and Lewis Namier rejected the tradition.[27] The interwar period was, however, still a time when the history of the British Empire was very largely taught through constitutional history. A representative figure is the historian Kenneth Wheare.[29] Butterfield, who coined the term "Whig history" as a criticism, by the period of World War II saw the imperial or "Tory" history as inseparable from it.[28]

Main article: Whig history
Main article: Historiography of the British Empire

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0-19-866110-8
    .
  2. ISBN 978-1-317-31711-1
    .
  3. ISBN 978-94-009-9712-7
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-521-31643-9
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-19-829334-7
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-14-028387-7
    .
  7. JSTOR 491895
    .
  8. JSTOR 1889976
    .
  9. ISBN 978-1-58798-280-4
    .
  10. ^ LaRue, Lewis Henry (1987). "Constitutional Law and Constitutional History". Buffalo Law Review. 36.
  11. ISBN 978-92-871-2649-8
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-19-505835-2
    .
  13. ISBN 978-0-7486-2643-4
    .
  14. ^ Seeley, John Robert, ed. (1881). Livy, Book I. Clarendon Press. p. 70.
  15. ISBN 978-0-520-94029-1
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0-520-07427-9
    .
  17. ISBN 978-1-84383-747-3
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-8122-5137-1
    .
  19. ISBN 978-0-19-104481-6
    .
  20. ISBN 978-1-139-45954-9
    .
  21. ISBN 978-1-139-45954-9
    .
  22. ISBN 978-1-139-45954-9
    .
  23. ^ Ward, Stanley Leathes, G. W. (George Walter) Prothero, Sir Adolphus William (1910). The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 10. CUP Archive. p. 837.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  24. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14428. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  25. ^ Adams, Herbert Baxter (1887). The Study of History in American Colleges and Universities. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 66.
  26. ISBN 978-0-608-41381-5
    .
  27. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-104481-6
    .
  28. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-78978-3
    .
  29. ISBN 978-0-19-164769-7
    .
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