ABSTRACT
This chapter explains laws and constitutions in the context of facts— facts of relations, which are often facts of conflicts—and therefore, there is a decisive attempt to break with the tradition of natural law, or even vague political laws, and return to facts of relations that settled governments and settled ways of rule produce. As Montesquieu said, law had the form of ‘a fixed and invariable relation’ between variable terms. Law was to be invariable in settling variable relations that produce conflicts. The fundamental issue is therefore: the problem of conflict, law and constitution is defined by the absolute limits of the theoretical or the conceptual field in which the problem is posed. In simpler terms it means posing the problem of conflict and law as a function of legality; similarly, moderation as a function of legality, indeed, as the argument will go, legality as moderation.
