Note (Back) — Chapter XV

Springing from the peculiar conditions which have been described, the handiwork of a body in which only a minority felt the slightest degree of enthusiasm for it, the constitution of the French Republic is essentially unlike any instrument of government with which the English-speaking world is familiar. It differs from the British in having been put almost wholly into written form. It differs from the American in that it consists, not of a single document, but of many, and in that it emanated, not from a great constituent assembly, charged with the specific task of formulating a governmental system, but from a law-making body which in truth had never been formally intrusted by the nation with even the powers of legislation proper, and had merely arrogated to itself those functions of constitution-framing which it chose to exercise.[460] It consists simply of organic laws, enacted chiefly by the provisional Assembly of 1871-1875, but amended and amplified to some extent by the national parliament in subsequent years. Unlike the majority of constitutions that went before it in France, it is not orderly in its arrangement or comprehensive in its contents. It is devoid of anything in the nature of a bill of rights,[461] and concerning the sovereignty of the people it has nothing to say. Even in respect to many essential aspects of governmental organization and practice it is mute. It contains no provision respecting annual budgets, and it leaves untouched the entire field of the judiciary. The instrument lays down only certain broad lines of organization; the rest it leaves to be supplied through the channels of ordinary legislation.