BOOK: Agustín CASAGRANDE, Constitución y Arbitrariedad. Conceptos e imaginarios del constitucionalismo argentino [Global Perspectives on Legal History, vol. 26, eds. Marietta AUER, Thomas DUVE & Stefan VOGENAUER] (Frankfurt am Main: Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, 2025), 224 p., ISBN 978-3-944773-50-6, € 19,25

(image source: MPILHLT)

Abstract:

The discourse of constitutionalism emerged out of the entanglement of three strands: legal theory, political philosophy, and historical narratives. Its structure revolves around the tension between the counter-concepts (Gegenbegriffe) of arbitrariness (to be denounced) and constitution (to be legitimized). This book presents a threefold genealogical analysis to access the logic of Argentine constitutionalism. First, a conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) exposes the distance between recent narratives of the development of Argentine constitutionalism as constructed by political historians, on the one hand, and constitutional scientists, on the other. The second genealogy explores the theoretical rupture between modern law and the traditional knowledge of ius commune in the shift from arbitrium iuris to “legicentric” logic – that is, the preeminence of written law enacted by the state. The narrowing of the concept of arbitrium to arbitrariness was central to the formation of constitutional law’s conception of the political order. Finally, this rupture went hand-in-hand with the establishment of new political imaginaries, including autocratic caudillos, suggestible masas, anarchic tendencies of a people, etc. During the 19th century, these fueled the sense among the elites that a new order was needed; but they also still remain part of current narratives. Revealing these emotional imaginaries that guided, and continue to guide, constitutional practice enables a dialogue between the history of law as written by historians and as written by constitutionalists, with the purpose of understanding the recurrent crises that still afflict Argentine constitutionalism in the 21st century.

On the author:

Agustín E. Casagrande is Professor of Legal Sociology in the Law Faculty of UNLP and Professor of the History of Western Law in the School of Humanities of UNSAM.

Table of contents:

Introducción.
Antinomias del lenguaje constitucional

Primera Parte
Constitución: Teoría e historiografía jurídica

Capítulo I: Historia constitucional, historia conceptual. Genealogía epistemológica de la historia crítica del derecho

1. Historia jurídica de la historia constitucional (y su deriva conceptual)

2. Constitución y «orden concreto»: un nuevo modo de Begriffsbildung

3. Historia del derecho (modo crítico): antropologías e instituciones

4. Historia constitucional desde la historia crítica del derecho.

Capítulo II: ¿Antigua Constitución o Gobernanza Doméstica? Conceptos y categorías en la nueva historia político-constitucional Argentina

1. Ortopedia constitucional: función educativa del constitucionalismo argentino

2. Antigua Constitución e historiografía política

3. Gobernanza doméstica e historia jurídica crítica

4. Crítica y crisis del discurso constitucional histórico argentino

Segunda Parte: Arbitrariedad y Legalidad: Sistemática del derecho

Capítulo III: Una historia conceptual de la arbitrariedad. Aproximación a la sistemática jurídica (Siglos XVI–XX)

1. Arbitrium: concepto integrador del derecho en el mundo jurisdiccional

2. Del arbitrium a la arbitrariedad: legalidad y exterioridad

3. Arbitrariedad: entre sistemática y narrativa histórica

Capítulo IV: Legalidad y arbitrariedad. Aporía nomológica entre Constitución y Administración

1. Legalidad y arbitrariedad: contra-conceptos constitucionales

2. Naturaleza, filosofía, Constitución: génesis y lógica de la legalidad

3. Hacia una legalidad argentina: filosofía jurídica y constitucionalismo

4. Legalización del derecho y ley natural: seguridad de individuo, razón de ley

5. El "imperio de la ley": civilizando las pasiones

6. "Principio de Legalidad": Constitución y administración

7. Del "imperio" al "principio": la gubernamentalidad constitucional

Tercera Parte: Imaginarios: Historia Constitucional argentina

Capítulo V: La Nación, la Ley y la Historia. Fuentes del derecho constitucional argentino

1. La arbitrariedad en el derecho: hipótesis de lectura constitucional

2. Epiqueya y Arbitrio: la aplicación del derecho entre «casuismo y sistema»

3. El momento Sarmiento: estructura literaria de la arbitrariedad argentina

4. Mandones arbitrarios: los caudillos y las masas en la enseñanza constitucional

5. «Escenas de sangre»: un imaginario para el constitucionalismo argentino

Conclusiones: Constitucionalismo e imaginación histórica

Fuentes y bibliografía

1. Fuentes impresas

2. Bibliografía

Find more on: MPILHLT & epubli.

BOOK: "History and Constitution" by Luigi Lacché (2016)

History and Constitution. Developments in European Constitutionalism: the comparative experience of Italy, France, Switzerland and Belgium, by Luigi Lacché

all information here

Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 299 

Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 2016. IX, 722 S.

ISBN 978-3-465-04285-3

---

This volume gathers together 25 essays dedicated to the history of four important constitutional experiments (France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy). While it considers these experiments and developments in the 19th and 20th centuries, comparative constitutional history, nevertheless, offers the possibility of obtaining a wider purview. It is in this sense that we can speak of the myth of the English constitution pervading the discourses and language of the French liberals, of Belgium being referred to as “Little England” in Italy, and the Modell Deutschland as increasingly becoming an object of fascination for Italian scholars of public law. In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville analysed the situation in Switzerland and compared the different kinds of federalism present in America and in Europe.

A European comparative constitutional history, taking up a global perspective, can help us to better decipher two very important issues pertinent to our times: first, for assessing the identity and the constitutional substance of a living common core of the European constitutional traditions; and second, for considering constitutional history as a useful tool to address different levels of global constitutionalism and new trends of governance. History & Constitution offers not only insights into the past, but also provides some guidelines for the future.