In the course of the development of modern constitutionalism the biennium of 1848-9 has been
continuously underrated. No collection of its constitutions has ever been published nor any
systematic interpretation of them has yet been written in spite of the fact that during the
revolutionary upheaval of 1848-9 more than 40 constitutions were with at least some sort of
public legitimacy drafted in Europe and most of them enacted. The twelve articles assembled in
this volume were written to illustrate with a focus on the organization of legislative and
executive powers some major aspects of this struggle. Besides several German Italian and
Austro-Hungarian constitutions and those of France Switzerland and the Netherlands the
constitution of Wisconsin is deliberately included to document the whole range of ideas from
nearly unconcealed opposition to major constitutional concessions to the rule of popular
sovereignty in a democratic republic and to demonstrate the similarities as well as the
differences between European and American constitutional concepts at the time. As a result the
years 1848-9 stand out for some major results that transformed the performance of modern
constitutionalism in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentieth
centuries.
