THE AMBIGUITIES OF `` GRANTED CONSTITUTIONALISM `` : A TRANSATLANTIC DEBATE (III)

Our journey ends in Brazil. According to textbooks of constitutional history, this ``periphery'' country, recently independent, looked with envy at the European and North American constitutional novelties, not without trying to maintain its identity. Olhos na Europa, pes na America? Doubtless; still it is necessary to measure the extent of this ``Europe'', admired in space as in time. The doctrine, criticizing the granted Constitution of 1824, qualified of nominal, had too long hid the reality, even the efficiency, of a constitutionalism in singular outlines, which involves both social and institutional engineering, thus not reducible to the modern constitutionalism. The political actors of Brazil, catholics and jurists by formation, endowed with a solid Roman culture, could not deny all the lessons delivered by the mos maiorum and by the medieval constitutionalism, based, according to them, on the fear of God, good virtues and the maintenance of a mixed government.