The concept of constitution in the history of political thought / Arkadiusz Gornisiewicz and Bogdan Szlachta (eds.).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1 The Ambiguity of Constitutionalism -- 2 Epistemology of Constitution -- 3 Can the Constitution Do Away with Nation State? -- 4 Remarks on the Legal and the Practical: The Rechtsstaat in Europe’s Development of the Rule of Law -- 5 Magna Carta and the Rise of Anglo-American Constitutionalism -- 6 The Case of France: Vitality of the Republican Legal Tradition -- 7 Is the Historical Constitution of Hungary Still a Living Tradition? A Proposal for Reinterpretation -- 8 Polish Constitutional Traditions -- 9 Russian Constitutionalism -- 10 Theoretical Problems in the Preamble to the 1997 Polish Constitution in the Perspective of History of Political Thought -- Index

The aim of the present volume is to discuss the notion of constitution from the perspectives of history of political thought. Its scholarly intention is to go beyond the approach concentrating on the formal understanding of constitution and bring forward more complex historical and philosophic-political interpretations. Our point of departure was the need to revive the somehow neglected distinction between the idea of constitution as an act of conscious law-giving activity and the notion of constitution conceived as the set of fundamental political rules derived from the very nature of political regime and its historical development.