Aux origines du contrôle de constitutionnalité des lois aux États-Unis
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Abstract EN:
The main purpose of our research work is to show that the origins of the judicial review in the united-states are intimately linked to the emergence of the constitution as a legal norm. The genesis of this control of the constitutionality of laws in the united-states proceeds from the invention and the progressive assertion of constitutionalism as the foundation of political liberty. There origins show the passage from the moral submission to power to a legal submission based upon the aknowledgment of the normative superiority of the constitution. From the matrix of the fundamental law illustrated by the magna carta to the rise of parliamentary sovereignity in the xviiith century, the attempts of judges such as coke or blackstone as transforming the status of fundamental law into a legal obligation led us to acknowledge the decisive influence of the english experience of limited power. The american assimilation of the writing of the constitutional norm and the rupture initiated by the approval of the constitution by the people appear as both the formal outcome of this experience. The emergence of control procedures of the conformity of legal acts in the colonies and the importance granted by revolutionaries to the unconstitutionnality of english legislative acts have largely contributed to the acculturation of the principle of a necessary limitation of the parliament and of ordinary law. This rise was initiated by judge marshall in marbury v. Madison judgment (1803). Stating the principle by which the constitution is law, marshall asserted the principle of the competence of the judges to apply the federal constitution. The transformation of the normative nature of the constitution led to the flourishing principle according to which the validity of the law is conditioned by its being conform to the constitution adopted by the sovereign people. Such an approach to the origins of the control of the constitutionality of laws in the united-states makes it possible to assert the particularly strong links uniting the principle of constitutional democracy to the logical requirements of the control of the constitutionality of laws. The insufficiencies of the principle of a possible objectivity of the law of the constitution is one of the element to the origin of a jurisdictional construction of a coherent constitutional order.
Abstract FR:
Le propos central de notre these est de montrer que les origines du controle de constitutionnalite aux etats-unis s'inscrivent dans le cadre de l'emergence de la constitution comme norme de droit. Ces origines correspondent fondamentalement a l'invention puis a l'affirmation progressive du constitutionnalisme comme fondement de la liberte politique. Elles traduisent le passage de la soumission morale du pouvoir a une soumission juridique fondee sur la reconnaissance de la superiorite de la constitution sur toute autre norme. De la matrice de la loi fondamentale, particulierement pregnante dans l'angleterre de la magna caria a la fin du xviiie siecle, aux tentatives des juges anglais, dont coke, a transformer son statut en une obligation legale pesant sur le pouvoir, nous sommes amene a reconnaitre une importance decisive a l'experience anglaise du pouvoir dans ce domaine. L'assimilation americaine de l'ecriture et de la ratification par le peuple de la constitution paraissent etre l'aboutissement de cette experience. L'emergence de la procedure de controle de conformite des actes dans les colonies, et l'antienne paroxystique des revolutionnaires autour de l'inconstitutionnalite des actes legislatifs anglais ont fortement contribue a l'acculturation du principe fondamental de la limitation necessaire de la loi ordinaire. Cette irruption a ete inauguree par le juge marshall dans la decision marbury v. Madison de 1803. Posant le principe selon lequel la constitution est du droit, marshall a affirme le principe de la competence des juges a appliquer la constitution federale. Une telle transformation de la nature de la constitution, fortement soutenue par les presupposes ideologiques des peres fondateurs de la republique americaine, a conduit a l'epanouissement du principe democratique selon lequel la loi n'exprime la volonte generale que dans le respect de la constitution adoptee par le peuple souverain. Une telle approche des origines du controle de constitutionnalite des lois aux etats-unis permet d'exprimer les liens particulierement forts qui unissent le principe de la democratie constitutionnelle et l'exigence logique du controle de constitutionnalite des lois. Les limites du principe d'une objectivite possible du droit de la constitution participe a l'irruption de la democratie juridictionnelle.