Daniel Lee
Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional
Thought
Oxford Uninersity Press, 2016, 384 pp.
ISBN: 9780198745167
Popular sovereignty – the doctrine that the public powers of state
originate in a concessive grant of power from ‘the people’ – is perhaps the
cardinal doctrine of modern constitutional theory, placing full constitutional
authority in the people at large, rather than in the hands of judges, kings, or
a political elite. Although its classic formulation is to be found in the major
theoretical treatments of the modern state, such as in the treatises of Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau, this book explores the intellectual origins of this
doctrine and investigates its chief source in late medieval and early modern
thought.
Long regarded the principal source for modern legal reasoning, Roman law
had a profound impact on the major architects of popular sovereignty such as
François Hotman, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius. Adopting the juridical language
of obligations, property, and personality as well as the model of the Roman
constitution, these jurists crafted a uniform theory that located the right of
sovereignty in the people at large as the legal owners of state authority. In
recovering the origins of popular sovereignty, the book demonstrates the
importance of the Roman law as a chief source of modern constitutional thought.
Introduction: Popular Sovereignty, Constitutionalism, and the Civil Law
1: The Lex Regia: The Theory of Popular Sovereignty in the Roman Law Tradition
2: The Medieval Law of Peoples
3: Roman Law and the Renaissance State: Dominium, Jurisdiction, and the
Humanist Theory of Princely Authority
4: Popular Resistance and Popular Sovereignty: Roman Law and the Monarchomach
Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty
5: The Roman Law Foundations of Bodin’s Early Doctrine of Sovereignty
6: Jean Bodin, Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Government
7: Popular Sovereignty, Civil Association, and the Respublica: Johannes
Althusius and the German Publicists
8: Popular Liberty, Princely Government, and the Roman Law in Hugo Grotius’ De
Jure Belli ac Pacis
9: Popular Sovereignty and the Civil Law in Stuart Constitutional Thought
Conclusion
Daniel Leeis Assistant
Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley
