Second research project on law & politics – Droitpol 2

The research program in “droit politique” is characterized by its multidisciplinary and comparative approach.
The “droit politique” is an invitation to studying the constitutional phenomenon in its historical, political and theoretical approaches. This projet is thus, by nature, multidisciplinary. This is apparent, among other achievements, in the workshops of “droit politique” organized within the framework of this A.N.R. project. These workshops, through the topics chosen or through the diversity of disciplinary fields represented among the participants, illustrate this open-mindedness. Our desire is therefore to encourage dialogue. Between disciplinary fields first, but also between different geographical or historical contexts. If several research projects have indeed focused on history, a special interest has also been given to constitutional topicality. In both cases, the approach remains nevertheless the same: to shed light on the present with a past that is not ossified but on the contrary irradiates through the ages.
The multidimensional nature of this A.N.R. project is also apparent in the interest shown for foreign constitutional models. British constitutional documents and parliamentary debates have for example been digitalized. Through the study of a constitutional system that is antithetical to written constitutionalism prevalent on the Continent, we can thus measure how these models converge or diverge, proving how relevant the concept of a constitutional culture can be to approach constitutional law.
The second research program in “droit politique” therefore characterizes itself for its approach that is also an ambition: to decompartmentalize the study of constitutional phenomena.

This program is structured around different tasks.
An important research project has been undertaken on the French constitutional crisis of 1962, relating to the referendum held on the election of the president of the Republic by universal suffrage. This crisis, a notion that should itself be discussed, is rich in terms of theoretical or philosophical questions (the nature of constituent power and popular sovereignty), institutional questions (what are the limits of the constitutional court’s jurisdiction, as they are notably expressed by the Conseil constitutionnel in its decision given on the 6th of November?) and lastly historical questions (how did institutional actors picture the political system of the Vth Republic and what is left of these representations?). This example, chosen among other, illustrates a key idea governing this project: to show that a particular constitutional problem calls for a variety of questions that an excessively restrictive definition of constitutional law would leave unasked.
The processing and scientific exploitation of these data is also at the heart of the “droitpol 2” program. We are developing, on the website of the “Encyclopédie de droit politique” (droitpolitique.com), an indexation feature using different criteria for these texts in order to propose the optimal use of the digitalized documents published on the website. The database, which will include documents of different nature (parliamentary debates, academic works, case law…), will mirror the scientific approach that characterizes droit politique, allowing the crossing and entwining of texts or concepts from diverse nature and disciplinary fields.

The enrichment of the content of the Encyclopédie will hopefully appeal to new research scholars, through the multiplication of the data but also through their diversification. We intend to promote an approach of constitutional law that decompartmentalizes this discipline and opens it to new perspectives.

Finally, within the framework of this program, a new series (“collection de droit politique”) will be launched by Dalloz publishing and will include translations of scholarly works relating to “droit politique”. This series will give the French-speaking academic community an access to important foreign works raising questions in constitutional theory and constitutional justice. It will also propose new original works relating to constitutional topicality and history. This series will hopefully perpetuate this scientific project by settling it durably in the academic “scene”.
The organizing of workshops also encouraged collaborative work and research by structuring discussions around one common topic, with sometimes very divergent points of view expressed. These workshops logically find an extension in other projects undertaken within the framework of this research program. They can for example be published on the website of the “Encyclopédie de droit politique” and often act as the starting point of a reflection that materializes through the different mediums developed with the support of the A.N.R.

This project is the continuation of a research program begun in 2008. Our purpose was to shed new light on the political dimension of constitutional law. While today constitutional law is dominantly understood from the point of view of courts, we believed that this could lead to misinterpretations and to playing down the role of politics in the making of constitutional rules. As we saw it, this was due, at least in part, to a growing incapacity to understand the major concepts of constitutionalism. While courts are entrusted with the protection of human rights, other departments of the constitution seem to have lost a great deal of legitimacy. This is due to their relative inability to instill new life into time-worn mechanisms of representation and accountability.

The notion of « droit politique » (the political dimension of constitutional law) has been chosen to reflect this deep interaction between law and politics in the constitutional field. While the functioning of political institutions should certainly attract more attention than it has in the recent past, our program goes beyond this traditional approach. We also aim at a better understanding of the work, modes of thinking, and legitimacy of constitutional court. The debate on these issues is significantly less developed in France than in other countries, especially the U.S.

Our program has begun in 2008 with the launching of www.juspoliticum.com. We have continued on with the ANR « white » program droitpol (2009-2012). The droitpol program had two main dimensions : one was the digitalizing of a corpus of major texts in constitutional law, especially parliamentary debates at key moments of French and (to a lesser extent) British constitutional history ; the other was a series of workshops at the Institut Michel Villey. The format of these workshops, based on a roundtable-type conversation over some key readings, was fairly new in France and helped reignite academic debate on many issues of constitutional law. The podcasts from the workshops, as well as revised transcripts, are now available on www.droitpolitique.com.

Droitpol 2 purports to follow on these existing programs, while trying to extend our research to new perspectives and methodologies. A new series of workshops will be organised, following on the success of the first series with fellow academics and doctoral students. New texts will be added to our online site, which already attracts academics and undergrad as well as postgrad constitutional law students. As a complement to this primary corpus, we now aim to add a series of academic commentaries on key events and concepts. Also, a major development would be a case law database on « droit politique », i.e. select cases exemplifying the political dimension of constitutional law. Finally, we plan to edit new volumes in a « droit politique » series soon to be created by Dalloz, a major academic press in the field of law.