Raymond Carré de Malberg: The Unknown Inspirer of the Fifth French Republic

Abstract

The Fifth French Republic owes its originality and permanence to Charles de Gaulle’s constitutional convictions and his determination to reform. However, in the case of France, which intellectual culture presupposes that institutions are shaped by a logical sequence of ideas, also the scientific justification of the political change must have been of great importance. The author of the theoretical rationalization of the Fifth Republic and its institutional revolution within the republican tradition was the forgotten lawyer Raymond Carré de Malberg. Pioneering nature of his writings may not raise any doubts. Carré de Malberg challenged a theory of parliament’s sovereignty from the republican perspective, which had an impact on thinking of the juristic elites participating in drafting the Fifth Republic Constitution. Carré de Malberg opened the door of republican tradition wide to the general presidential elections and referendum. He delineated the solution he recommended as the one that was in full accord with the notions and principles of the French Revolution. He applied the legal language to underscore the fact that the republic democratization would allow for the subjectivization of the executive power, restoration of the constituting power of the nation, primacy of the constitution and, consequently, the review of the constitutionality of bills. Carré de Malberg made a breakthrough in the French theory of constitutional law and thus opened up an opportunity for staging a republican institutional revolution that was an act of the founders of the Fifth Republic.