Abstract
This book is different from the many other manuals of Constitutional Law of the Fifth Republic. Contrary to the positivist and falsely scientific approach that has the favor of contemporary authors often tempted by juridism, he apprehends the Fifth Republic as a set of rules, practices and established uses to govern, because the government of men is first and foremost a matter of power and will, and nothing is worse than governments condemned to impotence.Beyond the text, its revisions and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Council, this book focuses above all on the spirit that animates the Constitution, the logic that is his and the political context in which it fits. Multiple references and testimonies enrich the subject in order to feed it with facts and anecdotes, in order also to put it in the perspective of what General de Gaulle wanted to do… By fully assuming this bias which consists in not confusing objectivity and neutrality. It is therefore not surprising to find this definition – discussed – that General de Gaulle gave of a Constitution in his press conference of 31 January 1964: «a Constitution is a spirit, institutions, practice».Preceded by an introduction that highlights the singularity of the Fifth Republic as its roots in a triple legitimacy, monarchical, democratic but also aristocratic, and a prologue that analyzes the conditions of the constitutional transition of 1958, the work is divided into two main parts: the architecture of the regime around the executive and legislative powers, then the metamorphosis of the regime, consequence of the change in the Constitutional Council and of a change in the logic of the institutions that European integration is facing.