III - Supranational Governance and Crisis

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.”