L’autonomie de l’histoire constitutionnelle

The paper is an attempt to determine the object and methodology of Constitutional History. It is argued that the study of Constitutional History cannot include the organization of political power but should be restricted to the legal rules of the modern State. These rules cannot be understood through a political analysis but only through a specific legal analysis. This analysis is specific relatively to political history but also to contemporary legal dogmatics. Its concepts are not those that belong to the legal systems of the past, but those concepts that have been devised by modern legal theory and, unlike legal dogmatics, Constitutional History can use a causal analysis. The article gives a few examples of the way in which the law can be analyzed from the point of view of causality.