ABSTRACT
In contrast to the United Kingdom, whose constitution does not consist of a single, solemn document but of a multitude of texts, laws, traditions and ‘conventions’, France is very attached to the idea of a written, solemn, rigid constitution – so rigid that, if the constitution is unable to deal with some problem or other, there is a change in the regime and a new constitution is adopted that supposedly deals with the questions not resolved by the preceding version. However, this childhood illness of French constitutionalism has had a few periods of remission, of which the most important and most famous was the Third Republic.
