Forged by Sieyès, the theory of constituent power has played a key role in the way French legal thought has interpreted the principles of modern constitutionalism. A return to reflection and theoretical questioning on the notion of constituent power may now seem a necessity, if we are to analyze the legal and political issues at stake in the highly complex process of constitutional revision, through which each of the member peoples of the European Union is expressing its support for the text of the Lisbon Treaty, in which the very possibility of the existence of a European "constituent power" is at stake.
Symposium