Arguing and Bargaining in Two Constituent Assemblies

In this Article I discuss the process of constitution-making at the Federal Convention in Philadelphia' and at the Assemblee Constituante in Paris from 1789 to 1791.2 In doing so, I shall be guided by three objectives. In increasing order of abstraction and, I hope, of competence, they are: historical, sociological and conceptual. First, the comparison between the two eighteenth-century assemblies can improve our understanding of each, by suggesting lines of investigation that might otherwise not have occurred to us. A couple of examples, more fully discussed in Part IV below, will indicate what I have in mind. In view of the generally dismal view of human nature at the Federal Convention, we might ask whether similar skeptical ideas can be identified in the French Assembly. When the debates are read with this question in mind, we find that the delegates in Paris were less concerned with the greed and self-interest of future legislators than with their vanity and pride. Also, without this comparison I probably would not have grasped the importance of procedural precommitment in the two assemblies.