Living in the Languedoc:    Central Government:    The Constitution    Guarantee of Rights

The 1958 Constitution incorporates seventeen articles of 1789 and eighteen paragraphs of the 1946 Constitution,

Article 16 of the 1789 Declaration affirms that a Constitution must guarantee rights. What exactly this meant, no-one seemed to know. There are for example no concrete guarantees familiar to the English speaking world, such as habeus corpus, the provisions of Magna Carta, or anything like the English concepts like Equity, nor practical legal tools like Prerogative Writs or Orders, nor even Judicial Reviews.

In 1971 the Guarantee of the Rights enshrined in the 1958 constitution was given some substance by the creation of a Constitutional Council. The Council was given responsibility for ensuring that laws passed by Parliament are in conformity with Constitutional texts (as the Supreme Court does in the USA).