Constituição: centelha da soberania popular na filosofia de Condorcet

• Ano de defesa: 2017
• Autor(a) principal: Patricia Carvalho Reis
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; UFMG
• Palavras-chave em Português: Constituição; Soberania popular; Representação; Instrução pública; Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis,1743-1794; Filosofia; Soberania
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/BUBD-AQPHRZ

This work analyzes the idea defended by Condorcet that the citizens, together with their representatives, must exercise, peacefully and in a regular basis, the legislative activity. This is justified by the fact that the people have sovereign power. In other words, the people have the right to decide what laws they want to follow. Since in large countries the people are not able to act alone in legislative activity, they must delegate a part of the power to make laws to some individuals. However, this delegation is not complete, since the people remain with other functions related to the elaboration of the laws. One of these concerns the popular ratification of the Constitution on a regular basis. As well, a citizen can request, at any time, change in the constitutional text and ordinary laws. In this situation, if some requirements are fulfilled, all the citizens of the country can be summoned to express if they consider pertinent this initiative of legal change. According to Condorcet, in order to the citizens act on the elaboration of laws, the Constitution should not only declare that the people have sovereign power, but also encourage the citizens to participate in the elaboration of the laws. If the Constitution doesnt encourage citizens to take part in this task, they probably will not perform it. Thus, as we have tried to demonstrate in this work, the Constitution must be the instrument responsible for instigating citizens to participate in the making of laws. In addition, according to Condorcet, popular participation in legislative activity depends on universal and free public instruction.