Book contents
- Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis
- Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- I The Role of Constitutions in Dealing with Crises
- II Courts and Crises
- III Supranational Governance and Crisis
- 10 Constitutionalism as Limitation and License
- 11 The Institutional Origins of Europe’s Constitutional Crises
- IV Implementing Austerity
- V The Effect of Crises on Constitutions
- Index
10 - Constitutionalism as Limitation and License
Crisis Governance in the European Union
from III - Supranational Governance and Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2019
- Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis
- Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- I The Role of Constitutions in Dealing with Crises
- II Courts and Crises
- III Supranational Governance and Crisis
- 10 Constitutionalism as Limitation and License
- 11 The Institutional Origins of Europe’s Constitutional Crises
- IV Implementing Austerity
- V The Effect of Crises on Constitutions
- Index
Summary
In the Anglo-American tradition, but certainly also beyond, constitutionalism is often associated with safeguarding a broad sphere of individual liberty against encroachment by public power. In his seventeenth-century manifesto against tyranny, John Locke famously depicted the sovereign as a fearsome lion, far more powerful than the petty varmints it was meant to control, and therefore ever-ready to devour them. 1 Liberals have since prized resilient institutional structures that conquer the authoritarian odds. Being constantly on guard against “the encroaching spirit of power,”2 they rejoice whenever sovereign power is “effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.”3 In this sense, the purest function of a liberal constitution is thought to be bridling the sovereign’s prerogatives, firmly delineating the sphere of individual liberty in respect of which the state and its organs “shall make no law.”
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- Information
- Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis , pp. 187 - 203Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019