1866-1947: CONSTITUŢIONALISM ŞI AUTOCRAŢIE LA ROMÂNI
1866-1947: CONSTITUTIONALISM AND AUTOCRACY AT THE ROMANIANS

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to trace back the origins of the two conflicting traditions that exist within the framework of the Romanian constitutional history. Between 1822 and 1947, the Romanian constitutional dynamics has been shaped by the aspiration to borrow extensively from the belgium, french and english public law, with the purpose to set up a political regime of constitutional monarchy and ideological moderation. The 1866 constitution is the climax and the coronation of this prolonged effort. There is, however, an alternative legal paradigm evolving in the same period, an alternative promoting the idea of autocracy. By eliminating the checks and balances guarantees and by curtailing severely human rights, this autocratic approach managed, between 1938 and 1944, to impose its own agenda, by dismantling the rule of law state. The legal and political conversation between these two traditions is at the the very centre of Romanian modernization.

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