Suffrage Rights Research Articles

Unruly Female Characters in Augusta Webster’s Selected Poetry

With her unfaltering dedication to fight against patriarchal convictions in Victorian Britain, Augusta Webster (1837-1894) is featured as a groundbreaking activist poet who grapples steadfastly with the problems of gender discrimination and dualistic constructions of womanhood. At the center of Webster’s feminist agenda are Victorian women’s educational and suffrage rights, equal employment opportunities and economic freedom. Webster’s reformist character is profoundly manifested in her choice of nonconformist, radical female characters as the spokesperson of her ideas, who are condemned and marginalized by the Victorian society. The main concentration of this study, hence, is to analyze these maverick female characters in “Medea in Athens”, “A Castaway”, and “Sister Annuciata” to unravel Webster’s political, activist impetus to destabilize dichotomous conceptualizations of womanhood, either as the angel in the house or the fallen woman in Victorian society.

War, Politics, and Change

Historians have long documented the ways in which war and politics bring about social, economic, and cultural change. Nowhere is this more evident than during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The war devastated the South; it upended the system of chattel slavery and instigated remarkable transformations to the region’s demographics, political, and economic structures. Reconstruction emerged out of the ashes of war. This critical and hotly debated period redefined U.S. citizenship, expanded suffrage rights, and altered the relationship between the federal government and the states. Many of the lofty goals of Reconstruction, however, fell short as southern “Redeemers” regained political power and enshrined a new system of white supremacy. While many of the changes during this era were structural, individuals also experienced personal metamorphoses. Each of the manuscripts reviewed in this issue explore these various transformations, shedding new light on military command and contingency, national and regional politics, and individual struggles as the American nation navigated disorienting change during these fateful years.

An unfinished suffrage reform. Voting rights in Sweden after the ‘democratic breakthrough’

ABSTRACT This article examines the complex and non-linear process of democratization in Sweden after the introduction of so-called universal suffrage in 1921. The research questions address the excluded groups post-1921, the reasons for their exclusion, and the historical processes that led to further expansions of suffrage rights. The study shows that the expansion of suffrage rights in Sweden after 1921 was not guided primarily by a desire to broaden voter inclusion and/or rectify the limitations of the 1921 legislation. Instead, the motivations were embedded in a more intricate and multifaceted tapestry of political aims and alliances as well as situational factors that included various social, economic, and cultural shifts. The article concludes that the history of suffrage in Sweden after 1921 has been one of continuous negotiations, transformations, and adaptations, and that this provides valuable insights for addressing challenges of political inclusion and representation in the present and future.

Striving for autonomy and feminism: What possibilities for Saudi Women?

AbstractCaught in a web of cultural and religious conservatism, a totalitarian government that does not permit any form of civil society organisation, it is hardly surprising to note that before 1991 Saudi women could not mobilise in a movement to demand their confiscated rights. Until very recently, Saudi women were deprived of suffrage rights, freedom of movement, and the right to own their bodies and act freely without the consent of their male guardians. This article traces Saudi women’s trajectory to secure citizenship rights and achieve autonomy against the threat of a conservatism that is deeply imbedded in the Saudi socio-cultural fabric.

Enfranchising migrants in Chile: a century of politics, elites, and regime changes

ABSTRACT Enfranchising migrants into the demos is a growing global trend, not exclusive to democracy. Analysing a country that has expanded migrant suffrage in both democracy and dictatorship, I address how and why Chile became one of the most inclusive countries worldwide for migrant voting rights. Chile was a pioneer for enacting select immigrant suffrage rights in relative democracy in 1925, expanded the rights in 1980 during dictatorship, then was a latecomer for granting emigrant voting rights in liberal democracy in 2014. Stepping away from analysing enfranchisement in consolidated democracies in the ‘Global North’, I unpack almost a century of elite-led top-down politics in Chile through historical analysis and taking 1980 enfranchisement as an extreme case. The evidence comes from constitutional laws, transcribed debates from constitutional commission sessions, scholarly literature, national censuses, and electoral data. The findings reveal the durability of migrant voting rights and a normative path dependence of who belongs as voters. Inclusivity requires not only continued implementation in elections but also rights survival through shifting ideology and political regime types.

Beyond Women’s Voices: Towards a Victim-Survivor-Centred Theory of Listening in Law Reform on Violence Against Women

Australia is witnessing a political, social and cultural renaissance of public debate regarding violence against women, particularly in relation to domestic and family violence (DFV), sexual assault and sexual harassment. Women's voices calling for law reform are central to that renaissance, as they have been to feminist law reform dating back to nineteenth-century campaigns for property and suffrage rights. Although feminist research has explored women’s voices, speaking out and storytelling to highlight the exclusions and limitations of the legal and criminal justice systems in responding to women’s experience, less attention has been paid to how women's voices are elicited, received and listened to, and the forms of response they have received. We argue that three recent public inquiries in Australia reveal an urgent need for a victim-survivor-centred theory of listening to women’s voices in law reform seeking to address violence against women. We offer a nascent theory of a victim-survivor-centred approach grounded in openness, receptivity, attentiveness and responsiveness, and argue that in each of our case studies, law reform actors failed to adequately listen to women by silencing and refusing to listen to them; by hearing them but failing to be open, receptive and attentive; and by selectively hearing and resisting transformation. We argue that these inquiries signal an acute need for attention to the dynamics of listening in law reform processes, and conclude that a victim-survivor-centred theory of listening is a critical foundation for meaningful change to address violence against women.

Freedom’s Banner: How Peaceful Demonstrations Have Changed The World by Paul Harris

Reviewed by: Freedom’s Banner: How Peaceful Demonstrations Have Changed The World by Paul Harris Victoria Tin-bor Hui (bio) Paul Harris, Freedom’s Banner: How Peaceful Demonstrations Have Changed The World (Crux Publishing, 2022), ISBN: 978-1-913613-10-5, 358 pages. Paul Harris’s Freedom’s Banner: How Peaceful Demonstrations Have Changed the World is a tour de force account of struggles for the right of demonstration, universal suffrage, and workers’ rights. As a former chair of the Hong Kong Bar Association, the author draws important implications for why the Hong Kong struggle has been crushed by the draconian National Security Law. [End Page 868] I. GLOBALIZED STRUGGLES FOR THE RIGHT OF DEMONSTRATION Harris’s book vividly illustrates that struggles for the right to demonstrate were global from the start. In the U.K., it was the French Revolution that provided “an inspiration and a model” for British reformers.1 In the American colonies, the freedom of assembly—though not originally including the right of demonstration— developed as resistance to King George III of England.2 American activist Henry David Thoreau’s essay on “civil disobedience” influenced not just British campaigner for Women’s Suffrage Alice Paul, but also Russian novelist Tolstoy and Indian Mohandas Gandhi.3 Gandhi met in London with the Women’s Suffragists Emmeline Pankhurst, whose violent approach he did not accept, and Charlotte Despard, whose “spiritual resistance” he admired.4 Martin Luther King and other black activists visited India to learn about Gandhi’s civil disobedience. More recently, Hong Kong’s “Be Water” protest style has been copied in Iraq, Chile, and the UK.5 Regrettably, while “some peaceful demonstrations have changed the world,” many have failed. Chapter 16 is specifically entitled “what makes a successful demonstration?” but the entire book addresses this question. The lesson is extremely sober: “no matter how large or well-planned they are, they can rarely, if ever, succeed, against a totally intransigent government prepared to use force to oppose them.”6 Everywhere, the uniformed forces—the military and the police—routinely met peaceful demonstrations with “a hail of bullets.”7 The police have also adopted the “unsavory practice” of using “agent provocateurs” throughout the long history of demonstrations. 8 Harris is at pains to distinguish between “two different approaches to demonstrations, between those which want to stay within the law, and those which deliberately set out to break laws . . . believe[d] to be unjust.”9 Yet, “[where] a regime is prepared to use unlimited force against unarmed protesters, neither the law-abiding demonstration, nor the Gandhian route of passive civil disobedience, offers much hope for political change, absent special factors such as international support or a regime which is deeply divided within itself.”10 How, then, did less intransigent governments emerge? Harris notes that “it seems to have come down to chance” and “timing.”11 The Magna Carta of 1215 could stick because John of England, who “had no plans to keep his promises,” died suddenly, so the succeeding boy king, Henry III, was forced by the barons to re-swear the agreement.12 The [End Page 869] Bill of Rights of 1688 was enacted after James II fled to France and was replaced by William of Orange as a condition of being crowned.13 Reform had a chance after King George IV, “a rigid opponent of any kind of Parliamentary reform,” was succeeded by William IV, who was “more respectful of the limitations placed on a constitutional monarch.”14 Earl Grey, who was appointed as Prime Minister, became “a tacit ally” of the reform movement. 15 Gandhi’s civil disobedience was not smashed because he dealt less with General Dyer’s “bloodthirstiness and savagery” and more with Viceroy Lord Irwin, who “had liberal views” and “preferred to play by recognized rules.”16 Moreover, “the greatest triumph of Gandhian principles since Gandhi did not occur in a tyrannical regime,” but in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.17 In contrast, in South Africa, where the coloreds were repeatedly massacred “with the apparent complete intransigence of the bulk of the white population,” “dismantling apartheid through non-violent civil disobedience was not a realistic strategy” for decades.18...

Types Of Absenteeism: The Ways Of Increasing The Citizens' Political Activity

This article is devoted to the research on the phenomenon of absenteeism and its influence on the electoral process. The aim of the article is to present the types of absenteeism, the causes of occurrence of absenteeism, and the ways of overcoming absenteeism. It is necessary to mention the becoming of absenteeism into the subject of study by sociologists, politicians, and later lawyers. According to Article 4 of the Constitutional law of RA "Electoral Code": "Elections shall be held on the basis of the principles of free and voluntary exercise of the right of suffrage. No one shall have the right to force an elector to vote for or against a candidate (a political party) or have the right to force an elector to participate or not to participate in elections." The phenomenon of absenteeism has arisen from the above-mentioned principle and has become a means of boycotting elections. It is necessary to choose a certain way to overcome absenteeism which would not doubt the implementation of the principle of free and voluntary exercise of the right of suffrage, as well as other principles typical to a democratic state. The results of the article are based on the experience of foreign countries, the degree of voters’ participation during the elections held in a number of countries (presidential, parliamentary), and especially the degree of voters’ participation in the elections in the Republic of Armenia, and how it has changed. The results of the research allow us to conclude that there are three main ways to overcome voter absenteeism: to define the obligation of citizens to vote during elections, to exclude both the minimum electoral threshold and the requirement to consider the election valid, and to develop the legal culture of the electorate, to strengthen the citizens' confidence in the elections and in the realization of the importance of their participation in the process of the state government.

Čija Kriza?

In 1929, the central feminist organization in interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes / Yugoslavia Alijansa ženskih pokreta (Women's Movements' Alliance) removed the demand for women's suffrage rights from their program. By analyzing and carefully contextualizing articles published in the central Yugoslav feminist magazine Ženski pokret (Belgrade, 1920-1938), the article addresses a specific gap in historiography about women's movements and feminisms in interwar Yugoslavia, and argues that the removal od this demand from the feminists' program was not only a direct consequence of the Royal dictatorship, but also a reflection of a broader disillusionment with the parliamentary and party politics in interwar Yugoslavia. More broadly, the article addresses the narrative of the „crisis of feminism“, suggesting that this is not a sufficently satisfactory explanation for the transformation of feminism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Furthemore, the article contributes to the historiography of the political history of feminisms, and acknowledges the entangled history of the Yugoslav feminist movement with the parliamentary and party politics. Methodologically, it follows the recent approaches to the history of political thought in East Central Europe, and gives new insights into the political thought of the feminists from the AŽP, and particularly their leader Alojzija Štebi and her „political vocabulary“ and her understanding of political neutrality, moral crisis of political life, and small-scale work.

The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship by Deborah Willis

Reviewed by: The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship by Deborah Willis Holly A. Pinheiro Jr. (bio) The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship. By Deborah Willis. (New York: New York University Press, 2021. Pp. 243. Cloth, $35.00.) Modern Civil War–era scholarship on United States Colored Troops (USCT) soldiering has greatly benefited from academics across various disciplines, who have examined the profound and expansive impacts of African American military service on American history. Deborah Willis, a scholar of photography and imaging, provides a new and refreshing contribution to investigating African Americans’ complex lives in connection with military service. The Black Civil War Soldier is one of the most unique studies on the USCT in years. Willis’s research focuses on visual imagery to uncover the lives of historically marginalized people, who were critical to the Civil War in a multitude of ways. As the subtitle denotes, Willis acknowledges that citizenship was (for African Americans) never statically defined or limited to suffrage rights or aspirations for holding political office. Instead, she shows that every time Black soldiers or veterans—especially those in uniform—and their kin were photographed, they were forcefully demanding the recognition of their cultural citizenship. As a result, each image provides evidence of African [End Page 292] Americans—freeborn and freed, men and women—methodically fighting for inclusion within the United States’ national identity by controlling and displaying their images. Willis applies an intersectional approach of race, gender, and class to understand African Americans’ personal and public images’ actions. In doing so, he furthers ongoing academic and public conversations about memory and the Civil War in meaningful ways that a text-based study cannot always do effectively. Willis’s study seeks to empower African Americans by using their photographs and personal correspondences to speak for themselves while interweaving historical analysis throughout the project to give more context to each document. Taking this approach is a masterful way to give agency to the historical figures over 150 years removed from the Civil War. Moreover, their stances, clothes, facial expressions, and accessories collectively illustrate a carefully crafted image, highlighting that these African Americans saw military service as an avenue to reframe how the United States visualized and remembered them. Since racial discrimination and slavery negatively limited educational opportunities for many African Americans to document their lives, some people claim that it is difficult, if not impossible, to examine those lives. However, Willis urges people to reconsider analyzing photographs as an ideal source to investigate the USCT, as any African American, with the financial resources, could get their picture taken (even those who were illiterate). For African Americans, having a photograph taken was an expensive endeavor. The cost ranged from $0.25 to $2.50. This meant that wartime photographs potentially took 2.5 to 25 percent of a Black soldier’s monthly salary (before the 1864 pay equalization bill to rectify pay inequality among U.S. army soldiers). Therefore, while undeniably empowering, the pictures had the potential to have a direct and noticeable impact on the soldier’s wages (which often went to his kin). While the central focus of the book is on the USCT, they are not the entire story. By including the women’s voices and images—usually wives and mothers—connected to Black soldiers, Willis demonstrates how these women actively participated in and discussed the war. Each carefully posed picture of an African American woman is an example of her demand to have white society and the nation recognize African American womanhood on similar terms with white womanhood. Thus it is critical to recognize how African American women used their connections to military service and photographs to display, literally and figuratively, their agency to a broad audience. The book’s structure follows a chronological order. Each chapter focuses on a crucial moment of the war and its impact on African Americans, either [End Page 293] in the United States or the Confederacy. The images and letters that Willis uses for each chapter reveal that many African Americans were well aware of the war’s significance and their place within it. As a result, it...

Pelindungan Hak Pilih Penyandang Disabilitas Mental dalam Pendekatan Rangkaian Proses Pasca Putusan Mahkamah Konstitusi Nomor 135/PUU-VIII/2015

The Constitutional Court Decision Number 135 / PUU-XIII / 2015 stated that the requirement for "not being mentally / memory disturbed" to be registered as a voter in Law Number 8 of 2015 is unconstitutional. The decision opens a new perspective on the protection of suffrage for persons with mental disabilities, and acknowledges that mental / memory impairment conditions are not the same between one person and another. The decision is in accordance with the development of thoughts on the legal capacity of persons with disabilities using a continuum approach, which recognizing that everyone is a legal subject, but practically it is necessary to look at the person's ability to exercise their rights, especially in decision making. The Constitutional Court decision has been applied in various regulations related to elections, which cannot be separated from the efforts of disabled people organizations to implement it. However, the changes are still at the administrative level, have not resulted in a change in perspective on the recognition of the legal capacity of persons with mental disabilities. In practice, there are still cases of persons with mental disabilities who were not registered as voters so that they are forced to be unable to exercise their voting rights. Based on this explanation, it is important to analyze how the legal capacity approach for persons with mental disabilities is used in the Constitutional Court decisions Number 135 / PUU-XIII / 2015, and how this approach should be applied to ensure the protection of the suffrage rights of persons with disabilities. This legal research was conducted using a qualitative approach, using primary sources of law in the form of statutory regulations and other forms of policy, as well as secondary sources of law in the form of literature and other valid and relevant information. This study presents a discussion of the suffrage rights of persons with mental disabilities using a continuum approach that has not been discussed in previous studies, so that it is expected to be able to sharpen the implementation.

Syro-Lebanese Women’s Transnational and International Collaborations at the League of Nations

Syro-Lebanese Women’s Transnational and International Collaborations at the League of Nations

Pravovoe regulirovanie mekhanizmov lisheniya i vosstanovleniya v izbiratel'nyh pravah v RSFSR i SSSR (1918—1936 gg.)

The article is devoted to legal regulation of the mechanisms of deprivation and recovery of voting rights in the RSFSR and the USSR (1918-1936). Citizens deprived of voting rights because of their carrying on private trade, amounted to a special stratum of the population of Russia (USSR) in the 1920s - the first half of the 1930s Article is of interest to research the fact that the activities of the respective political institutions - control over the implementation of classes private trade and enterprise and the right of suffrage, has focused political, social, anthropological etc. problems inherent in Soviet society at that time. The political and legal aspects of this problem lie in the fact that disenfranchisement and control over the implementation of private trade are political institutions through which the state tried to solve its political, ideological and economic problems.

When voting, trust computer scientists

"The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions" [6]

Some are more equal than others: Palestinian citizens in the settler colonial Jewish State

ABSTRACT This article aims to examine whether the passing of the Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People represents a transformative moment in the history of the State of Israel, as some critics claim, that undermines the State’s unique democratic features precisely the principle of equality. In this respect, this paper aims to revisit the principle of equality as it is enshrined in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel and as it applies in practice, law and court rulings. Specifically, the article will explore how the principle of equality come to manifest itself in the relationship between the State and the Palestinian citizens in three key moments; first, a pre-State stage, in the making of the Declaration; second, a post establishment stage, in the granting of suffrage and citizenship rights; and third, in the aftermath of the 1992 ‘constitutional revolution’ with the passage of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. The article argues that the Nationality Bill does not represent a transformative moment, it rather reflects a continuous process that stems from the Zionist colonial ideology in historic Palestine. Therefore, rather than transforming Israel into an undemocratic apartheid State as some critics argue, the Nationality Bill rather makes sure that the State of Israel cannot be easily transformed into the State of all its citizens.

Migrant voting: here, there, in both countries, or nowhere

ABSTRACT Moving past the literature on states granting migrant voting rights, in this article I focus on individuals exercising rights in order to question the connections between (non)citizenship, political membership, and participation in contemporary societies. With over 120 countries worldwide having enfranchised migrants in some form, the binary of ‘here’ and ‘there’ is insufficient to categorize and study migrant political engagement. This article contains a new typology to classify the four options of migrant voting: immigrant (only in the destination country), emigrant (only in the origin country), dual transnational (in both), and abstention (in neither). While emigrant voting requires citizenship, immigrant noncitizen voting does not, so active noncitizen voting weakens the defining dimensions of citizenship as a concept. As a first application, I analyze differences between individuals pertaining to each of the four types, based on a 2017 survey of 680 migrants in Chile since this country grants extensive migrant suffrage rights.

Citizenship exercised by the right to suffrage in Brazil and Spain

One of the most well-articulated rules of international human rights law, the right to participate in politics and public life through the suffrage, is also one of the more frequently denied for individuals with disabilities. This work intents to draw a parallel, based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, about the structural power that the right to vote and to be voted can offer to all individuals who, somehow, are daily prevented from exercising them. The article 29 of this Convention, addresses the design and implementation of an electoral process that is non-discriminatory, while also requiring states to provide voters with disability-related other facilitative measures to enable their equal rights. Sovereignty makes the rights rise in each and every citizen and allows them to participate in political decision-making and to be part of the primary element in shaping the public interest. During the research, we look more closely at the rights of minorities, emphasizing the ones connected with persons with disabilities in the decision-making process, especially the political ones, so that their rights can be heard and enforced. Throughout the study, we observed that the guarantee of the right to suffrage and its manifestations requires, previously, the elimination of architectural, social, economic and attitudinal obstacles, among others. The rules contained in the Brazilian Inclusion Law and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are intended to shape parameters to protect and enforce this right of citizens with disabilities and drive the expression of this minority in all its political potential. Emerging practices around the globe, as in Spain and Germany, corroborating that persons with disabilities can be successfully incorporated in all phases of an electoral process. The suffrage rights become, therefore, a channel for participation and transformation of the subservient individual to a citizen capable of influencing decisions that will be taken on his behalf.

Realization of the Rights of Convicts in the Russian Constitutional-Legal Model of Free Elections

The author studies retrospective and modern categories of admissible limitations of the constitutional right of a person to elect others and to be elected for appointment into bodies of public authority and public offices if they have committed grave or very grave crimes. The author also gives a contemporary assessment of the normative introduction of such limitations in the election field taking into account the legal positions in international and Russian court practice. It is argued that the current Russian constitutional-legal model of free elections has an undifferentiated limitation of active suffrage for persons sentenced to a criminal punishment with a limitation of freedom. The author analyzes the court practice regarding the lawfulness and adequacy of undifferentiating limitation of suffrage rights of convicts, specifically, the legal position of the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. It is shown that some regimes of incarceration should be transferred into alternative types of punishment that do not entail the limitations of active suffrage. It is stated that there could be more stringent limitation for the realization of passive suffrage than for realization of the constitutional right to elect representatives into bodies of public authority and public offices, especially in cases of grave and very grave crimes. The author concludes that the limitations imposed by the federal legislation regarding the constitutional right to suffrage for persons guilty of grave or very grave crimes is admissible, no matter if the criminal punishment for such publically dangerous and illegal actions is conditional or it is an actual imprisonment in a penitentiary institution.

Hak Pilih Bagi Penyandang Disabilitas Mental Ditinjau dari Perspektif Hak Asasi Manusia

Dinamika politik di Indonesia pada penghujung tahun 2018 kembali hangat disebabkan oleh terbitnya Surat Edaran Komisi Pemilihan Umum Republik Indonesia yang menyatakan bahwa penyandang disabilitas mental berhak memperoleh hak pilih sehingga dapat didata sebagai pemilih. Hal tersebut menimbulkan pendapat beragam dimana akhirnya pemerintah mengakomodir hak penyandang disabilitas mental namun disisi lain memunculkan kekhawatiran bagi penyandang disabilitas mental apakah dapat menggunakan hak pilihnya secara baik dan benar atau tidak. Tujuan penulisan ini untuk memberikan pengertian komprehensif mengenai penyandang disabilitas mental, mendeskripsikan dasar hukum terkait hak pilih bagi penyandang disabilitas mental dan mendeskripsikan hak pilih penyandang disabilitas mental ditinjau dari perspektif Hak Asasi Manusia (HAM). Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian hukum normatif dengan pendekatan kualitatif yang bertujuan untuk mengungkap fakta dan menyuguhkan apa adanya keadaan, fenomena, serta keadaan yang terjadi berdasarkan studi kepustakaan. Dalam penulisan ini mendeskripsikan bahwa penyandang disabilitas mental sejatinya tetap dapat diberikan hak pilih dalam pemilihan umum karena sejauh ini tidak ada larangan bagi penyandang disabilitas mental untuk memperoleh haknya. Sementara dari perspektif HAM memandang bahwa pemberian hak pilih bagi penyandang disabilitas adalah mutlak karena penyandang disabilitas mental juga merupakan bagian dari warga negara yang diberikan hak oleh negara untuk dapat berpartisipasi dalam proses demokrasi secara prosedural.

Constitutional Law France

In order to understand the present, one must be aware of past events. Each political regime stems from a reaction to previous regimes. The current French constitutional and political regime is no exception as it is made up of a complex sum of reactions―positive and negative―to a long line of constitutional experiments. In that respect, it is generally agreed that the landmark starting point is the Revolution of 1789. Although there was an organized polity under the old regime (Ancien Regime), with a kind of customary constitution as embedded in the fundamental laws of the Kingdom, there was no constitution in the modern sense―that is understood as a set of rules and principles regulating the relationships between government and those being governed. The Revolution of 1789 represents this significant break from previous political tenets. While representing a significant trauma in the French society at the time, it really marked a fresh start towards the institutional and constitutional principles as we know them today, which include the separation of powers, the principle of a bill of rights, the primacy of the constitution, the principle of sovereignty and the right of suffrage.