El guardián de la Constitución en la obra de E. Sieyès: un precedente de la Justicia Constitucional en Europa

Abstract

This work sets forth the critical thoughts of the Abate Sièyes regarding the need to set up a body for the protection of the Constitution. Sièyes ¿the intelectual author of the distinction between constituent power and constituted power, and one of the fathers of the contemporary constitutionalism¿, did not only stand up for the need to establish a special procedure for the reform of the Constitution ¿a facet which was emphasyzed by another authors¿ but also he carried out the design of a body for the defense of the Constitution. In the framework of the revolutionary french context, the Abate from Frejús was the only one to notice it. The body for the defense of the Constitution was envisaged as the cornerstone of his political model and the logic corollary of the notion of constituent power, as the basis for the Constitutional state figured out by him. This necessity was notized for the first time in an important speech pronounced the 2 of Thermidor. Two weeks later, he developed his idea in another speech issued before the National Convention, specifically the 18 of Thermidor of the third year. Sièyes sets the need to establish a «guardian for the Constitution» in order to become a binding legal rule of compulsory observance. Sièyes is the firt one to establish with great technical rigour and with a high level of details, the basic design of that court both regarding its membership and its tasks. And he did it so foreseeing many ideas which are nowadays common ground for the European Constitutional law. Among them it can be emphasyzed the configuration of constitutional justice as a protective institution for minorities, as a body of political integration, as the supreme instance for the resolution of constitutional conflicts and as a jurisdicition for freedom.

Keywords

• constituent power
• constitutional justice
• defense of the constitution
• french revolution
• sièyes