Contents - Constitutional Court of Georgia

Lucas Prakke
SWAMPING THE LORDS, PACKING THE
COURT, SACKING THE KING.
THREE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES *
Lucas Prakke **
Professor Emeritus of Comparative Constitutional Law,
Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Three great constitutional conflicts – United Kingdom: Lords v. Commons, Parliament Act
1911 – United States: Supreme Court v. President and Congress, New Deal Controversy 1935-
1937 – Belgium: King v. Parliament, Abortion Act 1990 – Democracy wins the day in each of
these cases.
This essay considers three rather unusual constitutional conflicts that occurred in the previous
century in the United Kingdom, the United States and Belgium respectively. But before I start, let
me take you back for a moment to the beginning of the era of the written constitution, that is to say
to the late eighteenth century.
The world’s oldest constitution, that of the United States, was written in 1787 and came into
effect in 1789, even before France’s Etats-Généraux met again for the first time in almost two hundred
years. The American Constitution opens with the words ‘We the People’:
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.
* Cambridge university press license to reprint obtained.
** The present essay is a slightly adapted English translation of an address delivered some years ago on that university’s anniversary.
References to Dutch sources have been omitted. Translation by Kath Starsmore, a freelance translator specializing in law and
legislation. European Constitutional Law Review, 2: 116–146, 2006 © 2006 T.M.C.ASSER PRESS and Contributors DOI: 101017/
S1574019606001167
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