Maupeou Reform And Construction Of Sovereignty Of Modern States

Although the sovereignty theory of modern state began with the French jurist and thinker,Bodin,but never confined to his theory.In compliance with the requirements of the central authority of the ruler,Bodin's theory concerning legislative sovereignty dominated by the monarch was followed by Louis XIV,monarch of France in seventeenth century.However Bodin's theory can't explain these historical phenomena,such as France's legislation at the Estates-General before 1615 and the sovereign institution like the English parliament which was obviously established after Bodin's age.What's more,Rousseau had just abandoned bodin's theory and turned to the theory of people's sovereignty in next century.So here is the core question,Should sovereignty itself be embodied in the hands of the monarchs,the kings,the emperors,or should it be embodied in the name of the people? Or is this so called core thing actually less relevant? Perhaps when Mr Ackerman's narrative be introduced,we may find that when the people act as the Supreme Court to determine the fate of the country,they are also merely the transient political bodies of the sovereign.Therfore,in disregard of the political and historical differences between the United States and France,the dialogue lying between Bodin and Rousseau,who is the sole subject of sovereign power of a nation-state,is not the core problem in the construction of modern countries.Sometimes,rather than dwelling on the arguments of thinkers,it is better to reviewthese thinkers' attempts to give a clear historical account of rational explanations.In France,where bodan and Rousseau lived together,before the so-called “old system”was completely disintegrated,the three-way game between the administration,the legislature and the judiciary was played between 1770 and 1774.Chancellor Maupeou strongly with its dominant judicial reform was reshaping the legislative,judicial and administrative powers in the absolute monarch,Louis XV.Through the exile of all the judges in parlement of Paris,Maupeou really made it back to a certain extent on the era of Louis XIV when the powers of national legislation and executive governance are both domained by monarchs.However,by thinking about maupeou reform as a historical event,we will find that the main body of medieval national,judicial governance,which is parlement of course,after gave birth to modern bureaucracy administration,was betrayed by administration departments.Meanwhile the modern national political normalized be understood as “legislative sovereignty over judicial governance and completed the construction of modern country”.The historical phenomena and academic theories like above are worth pondering.Of course,the academic discourse of any era is inseparable from the political environment at that historical moment,and it is of great significance to understand the current political proposition and the reform trend.One of the tasks of this paper is to comb the theory of sovereignty from Bodin era to the French Revolution times.With the help of Bruce arkermann's concept of “the people as a Supreme Court”,he rethought on the rational way about Bodin,Hobbes and later Rousseau's theory regarding monarchs or people as the sole sovereign,and then reflected on the connotation of political normalization of modern countries besides the concept“legislative sovereignty”.In terms of the selection of historical materials,this thesis attempts to explain the historical event of the Maupeou Reform,which shows that“legislative sovereignty” is not the only way to think about the political normalization of modern countries.According to the theory of Bodin,Maupeou as administrative agent in the permission of the sovereign and lawmakers,Louis xv,he abolished parlement,the highest judicial institutions.In practice level,this system,for the first time,breaked the Montesquieu so-called hypothesis of “separation of powers” and vanquished the medieval rule of judicial theory.Furthermore,15 years after Maupeou failed to reform broke out the“French revolution”,thus loads of scholars even treated Maupeou Reform as a preview of the revolution.Based on this argument,there is a subtle tension between the reform of Maupeou and the political normalization of modern countries.Therefore,it is also the ambition of this article to sort out this relationship.In addition,the author tries to put forward a hypothesis by means of systematic theory.May this theoretical approach be understood in the way of so-called social subsystem of Luhmann,is there any possible to have all the doctrines of sovereignty been included in the framework of a complete system.After all,the great thinkers are not exactly the same as the great jurists,that is to say the jurists are not likely to take political and technical knowledge into account while constructing the legislative sovereignty discourse.