In this book, I analyze the theoretical origins, historical foundation, political meaning, and legal development of western constitutionalism, as well as the structure and transformations of constitutional law in the Western World. Although several complex issues will be taken into account, the main...
In this book, I analyze the theoretical origins, historical foundation, political meaning, and legal development of western constitutionalism, as well as the structure and transformations of constitutional law in the Western World. Although several complex issues will be taken into account, the main aim of this book is to handily introduce constitutional studies to university undergraduate and graduate
students. In the European Modern Age, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, extraordinary transformations of the political landscape took place. The closing of the Middle Ages led to the birth of new political and legal institutions: the nation states conquered the center of the scene, triggering processes of unification of the fragmented orders typical of the Middle Ages, and rationalization of the legal system. In the field of private law, the legal orders of the new nations, moving from the common foundations of Roman law, progressively undertook different paths, evolving into the traditions of Common law and Civil law. In the field of public law, we witness the growth of a rational administration, aimed at organizing the public functions in the vast territory of a state. The settlement of national monarchies also redefined the basic features of sovereignty as conceived in the Roman and Middle Ages. This led to the emergence of a brand-new model of international relations, a Jus Publicum Europaeum destined to regulate the relationships among the states for centuries and to shape the basis and the principles of modern and contemporary international law (Grotius 1625). These political phenomena, and the related transformations of the legal institutions, allowed for the demarcation of a broad space, synthetized at the beginning with the idea of Europe, characterized by common religious roots, economic transactions and mutual cultural influences, common principles of politics, common legal values, and mutually acknowledged methods of international relations (Schmitt 1950; Chabod 1995). With the colonization of the American lands by the European powers, the area of the Jus Publicum Europaeum also broadened within the new American colonies. Hence, on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a western society was developing. It is in this institutional framework—the nation state—and in this geopolitical landscape—the Atlantic world—that the doctrine of constitutionalism was elaborated (Matteucci 1976; De Martino 2022). Here, starting from the age of the modern revolutions (1689–1789), constitutionalism was established, triggering a historical path, which is still in progress today.
