Few other constitutions were born in circumstances quite so unencumbered. The French adopted their first constitution in 1791, but theirs didn’t last long, and how could it? The French were still living in France. They were in the hot middle of a story already in progress: mud wrestling amid the inherited grievances of their history, the latest chapters of which involved guillotines and beheading. The social context did not exactly favor sober discussions of mechanisms and procedures. The first French constitution had to be more treaty than manual.
