Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the French Constitution first written?
In 1791 the French National Assembly drew up a new, written Constitution to which the King gave his assent, and which governed France for the last year of the 18th century monarchy. For the first time it was necessary to define formally, as a matter of statutory constitutional law, the system of succession, and the titles, privileges and prerogatives of the Crown. In debating the succession to the Crown the contemporary understanding of the law of succession was publicly clarified. It rebutted the assertion by some that the claim by the Spanish line is a late construct, made to satisfy the ambitions of princes deprived of other claims. Indeed, it is evident that the issue of the rights of the Spanish line to the French crown remained an important constitutional issue.
The National Constituent Assembly () was formed from the National Assembly on 9 July 1789 during the first stages of the French Revolution. It dissolved on 30 September 1791 and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly.
On 29 August 1793, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. The French National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien de Robespierre, abolished slavery by law in France and all its colonies. The constitution of 1793, which was never applied, and the constitution of 1795, which was put into effect, did both contain an explicit ban on slavery.
In November 1830, a National Congress was established in Belgium to create a constitution for the new state. Fears of "mob rule" associated with republicanism after the French Revolution of 1789, as well as the example of the recent, liberal July Revolution in France, led the Congress to decide that Belgium would be a popular, constitutional monarchy.
After the establishment of the Fifth French Republic on 4 October 1958, the territories of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa were given the right to hold a referendum on their membership in the French Community, a modified form of the French Union which allowed some limited self-government and was viewed as a path to eventual independence.
Following the revision of the French constitution that established the Fifth Republic in 1958, the AEF dissolved into its constituent parts, each of which became an autonomous colony within the French Community. During these reforms, Middle Congo became known as the Republic of the Congo in 1958 and published its first constitution in 1959. Antagonism between the Mbochis (who favored Jacques Opangault) and the Laris and Kongos (who favored Fulbert Youlou, the first black mayor elected in French Equatorial Africa) resulted in a series of riots in Brazzaville in February 1959, which the French Army subdued.
Many who had sat in the National Constituent Assembly and many more who had sat in the Legislative Assembly were re-elected. The Convention met on 20 September 1792 and became the new government of France.
In 1946, the Loi Lamine Guèye granted some limited citizenship rights to natives of the African colonies. The French Empire was renamed the French Union on 27 October 1946, when the new constitution of the French Fourth Republic was established. In late 1946 under this new constitution, each territory was for the first time (excepting the Four Communes) able elect local representatives, albeit on a limited franchise, to newly established General Councils. These elected bodies had only limited consultative powers, although they did approve local budgets. The Loi Cadre of 23 June 1956 brought universal suffrage to elections held after that date in all French African colonies. The first elections under universal suffrage in French West Africa were the municipal elections of late 1956. On 31 March 1957, under universal suffrage, territorial Assembly elections were held in each of the eight colonies (Togo as a UN trust Territory was at this stage on a different trajectory). The leaders of the winning parties were appointed to the newly instituted positions of Vice-Presidents of the respective Governing Councils — French Colonial Governors remained as Presidents.
No official languages were recorded in the Constitution of 1992. Instead, Malagasy was named the national language; however, many sources still claimed that Malagasy and French were official languages, as they were "de facto". In April 2000, a citizen brought a legal case on the grounds that the publication of official documents in the French language only was unconstitutional. The High Constitutional Court observed in its decision that, in the absence of a language law, French still had the character of an official language.
In August 1791, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened revolutionary France to intervene by force of arms to restore the French absolute monarchy. In September 1791, the National Constituent Assembly forced King Louis XVI to accept the French Constitution of 1791, thus turning the French absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. In the newly established Legislative Assembly (October 1791), enmity developed and deepened between a group, later called the 'Girondins', who favored war with Austria and Prussia, and a group later called 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins', who opposed such a war. A majority in the Assembly in 1792 however saw a war with Austria and Prussia as a chance to boost the popularity of the revolutionary government, and thought that France would win a war against those gathered monarchies. On 20 April 1792, therefore, they declared war on Austria.
On 10 August 1792, an angry crowd threatened the palace of King Louis XVI, who took refuge in the Legislative Assembly.
A Prussian army invaded France later in August 1792.
In early September, Parisians, infuriated by the Prussian army capturing Verdun and counter-revolutionary uprisings in the west of France, murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners by raiding the Parisian prisons. The Assembly and the Paris city council seemed unable to stop that bloodshed. The National Convention, chosen in the first elections under male universal suffrage, on 20 September 1792 succeeded the Legislative Assembly and on 21 September abolished the monarchy by proclaiming the French First Republic.
Ex-King Louis XVI was convicted of treason and guillotined in January 1793.
France had declared war on England and the Dutch Republic in November 1792 and did the same on Spain in March 1793; in the spring of 1793, Austria, Great Britain and the Dutch Republic invaded France; in March, France created a "sister republic" in the "Republic of Mainz".
Following the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War, France once again became a republic – the French Third Republic – in 1870. The President of the Third Republic had significantly less executive powers than those of the previous two republics had. The Third Republic lasted until the invasion of France by Nazi Germany in 1940. Following the end of the war, the French Fourth Republic was constituted along similar lines in 1946. The Fourth Republic saw an era of great economic growth in France and the rebuilding of the nation's social institutions and industry after the war, and played an important part in the development of the process of European integration, which changed the continent permanently. Some attempts were made to strengthen the executive branch of government to prevent the unstable situation that had existed before the war, but the instability remained and the Fourth Republic saw frequent changes in government – there were 20 governments in ten years. Additionally, the government proved unable to make effective decisions regarding decolonization. As a result, the Fourth Republic collapsed and what some critics considered to be a de facto coup d'état, subsequently legitimized by a referendum on 5 October 1958, led to the establishment of the French Fifth Republic in 1959.
After surviving the vicissitudes of a revolutionary two years, the National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on 30 September 1791. The following day, the Constitution of 1791 went into effect, which granted power to the Legislative Assembly.
The importance of the draft Constitution of 1891 was recognised by John La Nauze when he flatly declared that "The draft of 1891 is the Constitution of 1900, not its father or grandfather." In the Twenty-First Century, however, a lively debate has sprung up as to whether the principal credit for this draft belongs to Queensland's Sir Samuel Griffith or Tasmania's Andrew Inglis Clark. The debate began with the publication of Peter Botsman's "The Great Constitutional Swindle: A Citizen's Guide to the Australian Constitution" in 2000, and a biography of "Andrew Inglis Clark" by F.M. Neasey and L.J. Neasey published by the University of Tasmania Law Press in 2001.
The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton and his colleagues John Jay and James Madison, were written in the late 1780s to argue in favor of the ratification of the United States Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation, which served as the first form of a Constitution for the newly freed country. The Federalist Papers were directed towards the anti-federalists, those who opposed a stronger general government (especially the New York anti-federalists), both to persuade them and to persuade undecided citizens to ratify the Constitution.The first Federalist Paper was published on October 27, 1787 in the New York Independent Journal. The essays argued that the proposed government would preserve the Union and give power to the federal government to act on the interest of the nation.
On 29 June–two months after Carol's arrival–the Romanian parliament adopted the 1866 Constitution of Romania, one of the most modern constitutions of its time. Carol signed it into law two days later. Modeled closely on the Constitution of Belgium, it guaranteed private propriety, freedom of speech, total freedom of the press and established separation of powers. This constitution allowed the development and modernization of the Romanian state. In a daring move, the Constitution chose to ignore the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, which paved the way towards "de jure" independence.
No official languages were recorded in the Constitution of 1992, although Malagasy was identified as the national language. Nonetheless, many sources still claimed that Malagasy and French were official languages, eventually leading a citizen to initiate a legal case against the state in April 2000, on the grounds that the publication of official documents only in the French language was unconstitutional. The High Constitutional Court observed in its decision that, in the absence of a language law, French still had the character of an official language.
On 4 February 1794, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly of the First Republic abolished slavery in France and its colonies. The military successes of the French Republic and Napoleon carried across Europe the ideals of egalitarianism and brought into question the practice of slavery in the colonies of other European powers.
The National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on 28 September 1791. Upon Maximilien Robespierre's motion, it had decreed that none of its members would be eligible to the next legislature. Its successor body, the Legislative Assembly, operating over the liberal French Constitution of 1791, lasted until 20 September 1792 when the National Convention was established after the insurrection of 10 August just the month before.
After the revolution that led to the overthrow of the monarch, King Farouk, and the declaration of the republic, President Nasser adopted the nation’s first written constitution as a republic in 1956. During the short spell of the United Arab Republic, (Egypt & Syria), President Nasser adopted yet another constitution for the new merger, but this merger was dissolved in 1961. In 1964, President Nasser once again introduced a new written constitution for the republic. In 1971, when President Anwar Sadat took office, he moved to the adoption of a new democratic constitution that would allow more freedoms, a return of a more sound parliamentary life and correct democratic practice with the return of political parties and a bicameral parliamentary system.
The Government of France consists of an executive branch (President of the Republic, Prime Minister, ministers, and their services and affiliated organizations), a legislative branch (both houses of Parliament), and a judicial branch. The judicial branch is, unlike for instance the federal judiciary of the United States under the Supreme Court, not organized into a single hierarchy (administrative courts fall under the Council of State, civil and criminal courts under the Court of Cassation), and some of its entities also have advisory functions. For historical reasons there has long been a hostility to having anything resembling a "Supreme Court"—that is, a powerful court able to quash legislation. Whether the Council is a court is a subject of academic discussion, but some scholars consider it the supreme court of France.
"La Marseillaise" () became the national anthem of France. The song was written and composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and was originally titled ""Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin"". The French National Convention adopted it as the First Republic's anthem in 1795. It acquired its nickname after being sung in Paris by volunteers from Marseille marching on the capital.
He was also one of the authors of the first French republican Constitution, which was written in 1793 but never applied.
Laos's first constitution was drafted and adopted by the Lao Issara (Free Laos) government on October 12, 1945, containing 41 articles, with many of its articles inspired by the June 1932 provisional constitution of Thailand. After the Lao Issara government was deposed by the French and the monarchy restored in 1946, the restored royal government (with the support of France) adopted a new French-written monarchical constitution, promulgated on May 11, 1947 and declared it to be an independent state within the French Union. The revised constitution of May 11, 1957 omitted reference to the French Union, though close educational, health and technical ties with the former colonial power persisted. The 1957 document was abrogated on December 3, 1975, when a communist People's Republic was proclaimed.
Before the current constitution was approved in 1996, Chad had already been subjected between 1959 and 1990 to eight constitutions. The first constitution was approved on March 31, 1959, when the country was still a French colony. The constitution originated a parliamentary system, with executive powers exercised for a five-years' term by a Prime Minister, subject to the confirmation of the National Assembly. This constitution was early replaced on November 28, 1960, when the country had just achieved independence, with a new one that introduced a semi-presidential system. President François Tombalbaye replaced that constitution on April 16, 1962, with a third constitution that provided for a fully presidential system. Under this constitution, the president was elected for a seven-years' term by a restricted electoral college, composed by National Assembly deputees, mayors, municipal councillors and chiefs. The new constitution also ushered the way to the one party-system by restricting election to the assembly through a single electoral list. The passage to one-party rule was later officialized through the constitutional law of December 29, 1965, amending the 1962 constitution. Eventually Tombalbaye opted for a new constitution in November 1973, on the wave of the cultural revolution and the demise of the Chadian Progressive Party in favour of the National Movement for the Cultural and Social Revolution, so that the new constitutional text would enshrine the regime's ideology.
A constitutional referendum was held in France on 28 September 1958. Voters were asked whether they approved of the adoption of a constitution for the French Fifth Republic written by Charles de Gaulle. It was overwhelmingly approved, with 82.6% in favour. Voter turnout was 84.9% in Metropolitan France and 79.8% overall.