Abstract
This manual is intended for first-year law or AES undergraduate students and students at the Institutes of Political Studies, as well as candidates in public service competitions.Often defined as proceeding from the fundamental norm called Constitution but also, more classically, as «all the rules and institutions through which political power is established, exercised and transmitted in the state» (Marcel Prélot), constitutional law governs the supreme political authorities and regulates the relations established between rulers and governed. Circumscribed to the study of general theory of constitutional law whose fundamental concepts and principles were forged in the Western world - this discards constitutional history and a systematic comparative approach: Comparative constitutional law and comparative legal systems -, this work, based on the French experience, deals in a first part with the general framework of the organization of political power: the constitutional state. In a second part, it considers the ways and means which, within it, from an institutional point of view alone, are nowadays considered as the necessary - although not sufficient - of a legitimate government combining limitation of the power of the rulers and participation in the power of the governed.This third edition is no more exhaustive than the previous ones, and although it has been enriched and supplemented in comparison with the first, it does not claim to be exhaustive, nor does it intend to exclude the discussion of certain received or current ideas: born of late modernity, have become the catechism of postmodernists.