A day in the life of the liberal centaur (freedom of the Moderns vs. Administrative jurisdiction in the French Restoration 1814-1830)

Abstract

This study demonstrates that the history of ideas can find excellent and necessary back-up from institutional history. To such end, it recovers the guiding lines of an important argument over the Napoleonic Council of State that took place during the French restoration. Politicians and jurists were complaining of the incompatibility between this institution and the representative government that the 1814 Charter was meant to have ushered in. The maintenance of the Council of State under the restored monarchy meant the continuity and consolidation of administrative jurisdiction, which was perceived as an instrument for destroying the freedom that the Moderns upheld for a representative sector of liberalism. Since this debate was expressed in essentially juridical terms, political history largely ignored it, despite the fact that all the political actors of the day considered it of great importance as they embarked upon designing the institutional workings of a State that finally turned out not to be very liberal at all.