Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought

Abstract

Abstract Popular sovereignty—the doctrine that the public powers of the state originate in a concessive grant of power from ‘the people’—is perhaps the cardinal doctrine of modern constitutional theory. Its classic formulation is to be found in the major theoretical treatments of the modern state, such as in the treatises of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and it functions as a model in the design of modern constitutions, by locating the source of such public power in a putative ‘We the People’ anterior to public institutions. This book explores the intellectual origins of this constitutional doctrine in later medieval and early modern legal thought. Key to the operation of this doctrine was the legal science of Roman law, long regarded as the principal source for modern legal reasoning in Western jurisprudence. Roman law had a profound impact on the major architects of popular sovereignty doctrine, such as Baldus de Ubaldis, François Hotman, Jean Bodin, Johannes Althusius, and Hugo Grotius. The book illustrates how these jurists strategically integrated the juridical language of obligations, property, personality, as well as the model of the Roman constitution, into their analysis, locating the right of sovereignty in the people at large, as the exclusive owners of state authority. In recovering the origins of popular sovereignty in this way, the book demonstrates the vital importance of Roman law as one of the major sources of modern constitutionalism.

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