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Unit 3: Constitutions and Constitutionalism

place of Roman law. A happy synthesis occurred between the Roman and Teutonic ideas and Notes
practices. For instance, the Roman conception that the people were the ultimate source of the royal
authority and the practice of the barbarian tribes that the king was under the law of the folk
happily coincided. The coronation ceremony in the presence of the chiefs and nobles coupled with
the swearing in ceremony of the king became a clear indication of the fact that the monarch was
the holder of temporal powers in the name of the ultimate authority of his people. These events
led to the growth of democratic constitutionalism.
However, what retarded the pace was the domination of the church. Political thinkers followed
the trend set by St. Augustine and St. Thomas in making secular authority subservient to the
authority of the church that signified the rule of the bishop over the authority of the monarch and
of the Pope over all secular and religious heads of the Christian world. This baleful state of affairs
could not be remedied until, after a period of about 800 years, the national monarchs raised their
heads to overthrow the discredited hold of the Papacy. The trend of nationalism reared its head
particularly in France, England and Spain that witnessed the emergence of the ‘actual germs of the
modern constitutional state’, for in these countries, practical politics “outstrode the legal theories
and the ghost of the Holy Roman Empire was irrevocably laid.”
Constitutionalism during Renaissance Period: The medieval world came to an end ‘with the
pestilence of the Black Death of the Fourteenth century.’ The renaissance marked the re-emergence
of a humanistic and scientific outlook. It indicated that the European people had developed a new
consciousness of life and a new sense of liberty. Achievements in the fields of arts, literature and
science threw off medieval forms and looked for new values. Inspiration was derived from the
models of the classical world. Along with the renaissance, another movement that brought the
Middle Ages to an end was the Reformation that destroyed the medieval concept of universalism
and scholasticism and supplemented the work of each other by creating modern secular and
sovereign national states. The general effect “was at once one of atomisation and one of integration:
it atomised the medieval world but integrated individual states.” However, one thing that still
retarded the pace of a constitutional state was the emergence of absolute monarchy. The unassailable
position, of a single Pope was taken over by a number of despotic rulers that forced the people to
take the matter to the revolution for a final settlement.
Machiavell’s Prince and Bodin’s Six Books on the Republic became the chief sources of attraction.
The result was that after the decline of the Papacy, absolute monarchical rules were established in
England, France, Italy, Spain and Prussia. For this reason, it is commented that the Renaissance
state “was not truly a constitutional, much less a democratic, State.”
Constitutionalism in England: Britain occupies the most significant place in the development of
constitutionalism. The age of Tudor Despotism ended with the ‘golden age’ of Queen Elizabeth.
The Stuart monarchs had to face the opposition of the people. The civil war of 1640–48 was
conducted on the issue as to who was supreme — the law (lex) or the king (rex). The defeat of the
king and the victory of the people confirmed the sovereignty of the people. What remained undone
in the civil war was accomplished in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that laid the foundations of
the sovereignty of the Parliament. The movement for the democratisation of the system continued
with the result that the great Reform Acts were passed in 1832, 1867 and 1884 that, enfranchised
more and more people. The Parliament Act of 1911 crippled the House of Lords and its amendment
of 1949 further reduced the area of authority of the House in matters of passing a non-money bill.
The rise of two political parties had its own contribution to the development of constitutionalism
in this country. It made the functioning of the parliamentary government a possibility.
As a result of all these developments, the sovereign stands removed from the area of political
authority; the power is exercised by the ministers accountable to the Parliament; and that all
citizens of the country, irrespective of their social and political position, enjoy the boons of liberty
and equality, what Dicey calls the ‘rule of law’. What is of special importance in this regard is that
English constitutionalism has supplied a “continuity of life to liberal institutions through many
centuries when elsewhere they were dead or had never lived, permitted the growth of its own
institutions among those communities in all parts of the world of which England herself was the
mother and supplied the pattern of a constitution when the moment came for any newly-liberated
community to found one.”

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