The Spirit of Law
The Spirit of Law (French: De l'esprit des lois, originally spelled De l'esprit des loix[1]), also known in English as The Spirit of [the] Laws, is a treatise on political theory, as well as a pioneering work in comparative law by Montesquieu, published in 1748.[2] Originally published anonymously, as was the norm, its influence outside France was aided by its rapid translation into other languages. In 1750 Thomas Nugent published an English translation, many times revised and reprinted in countless editions. In 1751 the Roman Catholic Church added De l'esprit des lois to its Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books").
Author
French
law
non-fiction
1748
France
1750
paper
[[s:fr:De l’esprit des lois|]] at French Wikisource
The Spirit of Law at Wikisource
Montesquieu's treatise, already widely disseminated, had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America. Macaulay referenced Montesquieu's continuing importance when he wrote in his 1827 essay entitled "Machiavelli" that "Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps, a wider celebrity than any political writer of modern Europe" [1].
Montesquieu spent about ten years (and a life of thought) researching and writing De l'esprit des lois,[3] covering a huge range of topics including law, social life and the study of anthropology. In this treatise Montesquieu argues that political institutions need, for their success, to reflect the social and geographical aspects of the particular community. He pleads for a constitutional system of government with separation of powers, the preservation of legality and civil liberties, and the end of slavery.[4]
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
A second major theme in The Spirit of Law concerns political liberty and the best means of preserving it. "Political liberty" is Montesquieu's concept of what we might call today personal security, especially in so far as this is provided for through a system of dependable and moderate laws. He distinguishes this view of liberty from two other views of political liberty. The first is the view that liberty consists in collective self-government—i.e. that liberty and democracy are the same. The second is the view that liberty consists in being able to do whatever one wants without constraint. Not only are these latter two not genuine political liberty, he maintains, but they can both be hostile to it.
Political liberty is not possible in a despotic political system, but it is possible, though not guaranteed, in republics and monarchies. Generally speaking, establishing political liberty on a sound footing requires two things:
This book mainly concerns explicit laws, but also pays considerable attention to cultural norms that may support the same goals. "Montesquieu believed the hard architecture of political institutions might be enough to constrain overreaching power — that constitutional design was not unlike an engineering problem," as Levitsky and Ziblatt put it.[5]
Political sociology[edit]
The third major contribution of The Spirit of Law was to the field of political sociology, which Montesquieu is often credited with more or less inventing. The bulk of the treatise, in fact, concerns how geography and climate interact with particular cultures to produce the spirit of a people. This spirit, in turn, inclines that people toward certain sorts of political and social institutions, and away from others. Later writers often caricatured Montesquieu's theory by suggesting that he claimed to explain legal variation simply by the distance of a community from the equator.
While the analysis in The Spirit of Law is much more subtle than these later writers perceive, many of his specific claims lack rigour to modern readers. Nevertheless, his approach to politics from a naturalistic or scientific point of view proved very influential, directly or indirectly inspiring modern fields of political science, sociology, and anthropology.