BOOK: Benjamin STRAUMANN, Crisis and Constitutionalism. Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford: OUP, 2016), 432 p. ISBN 9780199950928, 64 GBP

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

Crisis and Constitutionalism argues that the late Roman Republic saw, for the first time in the history of political thought, the development of a normative concept of constitutionthe concept of a set of constitutional norms designed to guarantee and achieve certain interests of the individual. Benjamin Straumann first explores how a Roman concept of constitution emerged out of the crisis and fall of the Roman Republic. The increasing use of emergency measures and extraordinary powers in the late Republic provoked Cicero and some of his contemporaries to turn a hitherto implicit, inchoate constitutionalism into explicit constitutional argument and theory. The crisis of the Republic thus brought about a powerful constitutionalism and convinced Cicero to articulate the norms and rights that would provide its substance; this typically Roman constitutional theory is described in the second part of the study. Straumann then discusses the reception of Roman constitutional thought up to the late eighteenth century and the American Founding, which gave rise to a new, constitutional republicanism. This tradition was characterized by a keen interest in the Roman Republics decline and fall, and an insistence on the limits of virtue. The crisis of the Republic was interpreted as a constitutional crisis, and the only remedy to escape the Republic's fate — military despotism — was thought to lie, not in republican virtue, but in Roman constitutionalism. By tracing Roman constitutional thought from antiquity to the modern era, this unique study makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Roman political thought and its reception.

On the author:

Benjamin Straumann is Alberico Gentili Senior Fellow at New York University School of Law and Lecturer at the University of Zurich. He is the author of Roman Law in the State of Nature and co-editor of the book series The History and Theory of International Law.

Table of contents:

Table of ContentsI. Inchoate Constitutionalism in the Late Roman Republic1. "Not Some Piece of Legislation": The Roman Concept of Constitution2. Infinite Power? Emergencies and Extraordinary Powers in Constitutional Argument3. "The Sole Bulwark of Liberty": Constitutional Rights at RomeII. A Hierarchy of Laws: Roman Constitutional Thought4. Cicero and the Legitimacy of Political Authority5. Greek vs. Roman Constitutional ThoughtIII. The Limits of Virtue: The Roman Contribution to Political Thought6. The Roman Republic as a Constitutional Order from the Principate to the Renaissance7. Neo-Roman Interlude: Machiavelli and the Anti-Constitutional Tradition8. Jean Bodin and the Fall of the Roman RepublicEpilogue: Constitutional Republicanism, the "Cant-Word" Virtue and the American FoundingBibliography

(source: OUP)