Bentham's constitutional thought

The first author to use the phrase “constitutional law” in a deliberate and conceptually consistent way, Bentham had all the theoretical tools required to understand normative constitutionalism as it emerged from the American and the French revolutions. He however rejected most of the institutional devices which accompanied it (the separation of powers, bicameralism, constitutional review and so on). While generally critical of the British Constitution, he also sometimes wrote in favour of it. It is perhaps in these apparent contradictions and ambiguities that the fecundity of Bentham’s thought resides, especially as new issues are taking shape around digital constitutionalism.

Chair: Emmanuelle de Champs is Professor in British history and civilisation at CY Cergy Paris Université, a member of Laboratoire AGORA and of the Centre Bentham. A specialist in intellectual history, she has published on several aspects of Bentham’s utilitarianism, including his constitutional thought, his intellectual and personal connections to the French-speaking world, and more recently, an introduction to Panopticon letters (Bartillat, 2024). Her current research focuses on the appropriation and transformation of utilitarian arguments in early feminist circles in Britain and in France. 

Speaker: Guillaume Tusseau, Professor at Sciences Po Law School

Discussants: 

• Peter Niesen is Professor of Political Theory at Hamburg University and a Fellow of the Collegium Lyon for 2024/25. His research interests lie in the philosophies of Kant and Bentham, democratic theory and animal politics. His co-edited Oxford Handbook of Constituent Power will be out later in 2025.
• Xiaobo Zhai is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau; and he writes on legal philosophy, Jeremy Bentham, constitutional theory, and Chinese law. His research has appeared in Law and Philosophy, Journal of Legal History, International Journal of Constitutional Law, etc. He has co-edited and contributed to Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification (with Philip Schofield, 2022), Bentham’s Theory of Law and Public Opinion (with Michael Quinn, 2014), and Bentham Around the World (with Simon Palmer, 2021). His books include The People’s Constitution (2009) and China’s System of Constitutional Implementation (2009).