Abstract
Since the end of the eighteenth century the separation of powers has been an essential element and, in a sense, a synonym of modern constitutionalism.1 It may be important to spell out from the outset two underlying dimensions of the question that will be discussed here:
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A.
The separation of powers was conceived of generally as a technique, a mechanism or an instrument of constitutional engineering, and more specifically as an anti-despotic, anti-absolutist organizational principle of government, and not as a goal in itself — the goal being instead and famously individual freedom.2 Now, in order to understand the alternative French and American interpretations of this instrumental constitutional principle it is worth stepping back and focusing briefly on the difference between two major possible understandings of this idea of individual freedom.
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Notes
About his life there is only one quite mediocre biography: Louis Bergasse (1910) Un défenseur des principes traditionnels sous la révolution: Nicolas Bergasse, avocat au parlement de Paris, député du tiers état de la sénéchaussée Lyon 1750–1832 (Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin).
Pp. 293–4. I am quoting from R. Ketcham (ed.) (1986) The Anti-Federalist Papers (New York: Mentor Books).
J. Rakove (ed.) (2003) The Federalist: The Essential Essays (Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martin), p. 197.
On this aspect of constitutional rigidity see Steven Holmes (1995) ‘Pre-commitment and the Paradox of Democracy’, in Passions and Constraints (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 134–77.
Alec Stone Sweet (2000) Governing with Judges (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
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© 2009 Pasquale Pasquino
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Pasquino, P. (2009). Nicolas Bergasse and Alexander Hamilton: The Role of the Judiciary in the Separation of Powers and Two Conceptions of Constitutional Order. In: Albertone, M., Francesco, A.D. (eds) Rethinking the Atlantic World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230233805_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230233805_5
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