SCHLESINGER (Arthur M.) – THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY, translated by Leïla Blacque-Belair and Rosette Letellier
SCHLESINGER (Arthur M.) – THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY, translated by Leïla Blacque-Belair and Rosette Letellier
    SCHLESINGER (Arthur M.)
    THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY, translated by Leïla Blacque-Belair and Rosette Letellier
Édition :
    Paris
Date :
    1976
    octavo, paperback, good condition, 564 p.
    “This work, which so forcefully highlights, in order to severely criticize it, ‘imperial’ presidentialism, opens with a curious and certainly innocent manifestation of national-intellectual imperialism that absorbs historical reality and colonizes the spirit of the laws. From the very first line, the author presents the principle of the separation of powers as ‘America’s original contribution’ and attributes its invention to the ‘founding fathers’ of the American Republic. He does not mention Montesquieu’s name, which one would search for in vain among the five hundred entries in the index. A little further on, the notion of the social contract does not evoke the slightest echo of Rousseau. But should we not remind ourselves, particularly in Europe, that the Age of Enlightenment is American, and that the sun rises in the West? The book, it is true—and its lesson concerns us all the more—is above all the story of the formidable shadows that this sun can cast with it.” This is a history that is at once historical, legal—the Constitution and the intentions of its authors are subjected to continuous and thorough analysis—and political, focusing less on the erosion of the principle of separation of powers than on the gradual appropriation of the other's prerogatives by one of the two political powers, with the ultimate goal—or at least the adventure came very close to ending this way—the "imperial" confiscation of power altogether. This shift may have been latent in the Constitution—what isn't latent in Constitutions?—and Arthur M. Schlesinger, moreover, raises serious questions about the practical functioning of strictly separate and equal powers. The entire work is oriented toward the crucial problem: foreign policy and its ultimate purpose. The American Constitution grants Congress the power to make war and peace. In its early days, this was indeed the case, and it was Congress that decided on the war against France. (Le Monde diplomatique, Oct. 1976, p. 26)

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