La Constitution et la memoire historique: progres ou regression du constitutionnalisme?

Abstract

Liberal constitutionalism, traditionally defined as the status of political power, also contains a self-representation of society, expressed by the concept of nation. For a long time, the concept of nation was unthinkable in constitutional law, because the nation was self-evident or posed too many questions for it to be possible to give a legal definition. This is no longer the case today: modern constitutions establish the nation as a legal reality distinct from the State; because the less the nation exists in fact, the more it must be proclaimed in law. In this qualification of the concept of nation, history plays a fundamental role, whether to substantiate the precedence, even mythical, of the nation in relation to the State, by making the constitution the expression of a national novel; or to issue a historical truth forged by political power. This <demotic constitutional law= tends to make constitutional law a substantial right, which is not without unease, since the memorial function of the constitution is instrumentalized by illiberal political power, like Russia, even Hungary. The constitution is then nothing more than a lie and the professional historian a potential criminal