Gerald Stourzh

Reason and Power in Benjamin Franklin's Political Thought.

Perhaps no period of modern history has been more a victim of generalization than the Age of Enlightenment. The worship of reason and progress and belief in the essential goodness and perfectibility of human nature are most commonly associated with the 18th century climate of opinion. Many of the stereotypes which have been applied to it have automatically been transferred to Benjamin Franklin. Already to contemporaries of his old age, Franklin seemed the very personification of the Age of Reason. Condorcet, who had known Franklin personally, summed up his description of Franklins political career as follows: “In a word, his politics were those of a man who believed in the power of reason and the reality of virtue.” In Germany, an admirer was even more enthusiastic: “Reason and virtue, made possible through reason alone, consequently again reason and nothing but reason, is the magic with which Benjamin Franklin conquered heaven and earth.” This is also the judgment of posterity. F. L. Mott and Chester E. Jorgensen, who have so far presented the most acute analysis of Franklins thought and its relationship to the intellectual history of his time, do not hesitate to call him “the completest colonial representative” of the Age of Enlightenment. Unanimous agreement seems to exist that Franklin was “in tune with his time.”

The Development of Constitutional Precedence and the Constitutionalization of Individual Rights

The first part concentrates on the emergence in England of “fundamental laws” in the sense of individual rights, the “liberties and properties” of Englishmen. I also show how notably in the case of the notorious “Septennial Act” of 1716, criticism that Parliament violated the “constitution” was expressed, and how about three decades later in the writings of Bolingbroke the word “unconstitutional” was born, gaining wide currency in the North American polemics against the British Parliament prior to independence. In the second part I concentrate on one of the most important aspects of early modern western constitutional history, the dissociation—in North America—of the “higher” positive law of constitutions as opposed to the inferior “normal” law of legislatures, at the same time also relativising the supreme character of “law” in the writings of Hobbes and Rousseau, and closely connected to this development, the upgrading of many individual rights to “constitutional rights”, in other words, their constitutionalisation. In the third part I concentrate on two judgments of the U.S. Supreme Court throwing into particularly sharp relief the superiority of constitutional law vis-a-vis ordinarily legislature-made law: the first, long famous, is Marbury v. Madison of 1803, and the second one, Obergefell v. Hodges of 2015, is fast becoming one of the landmark cases of human rights protection, with the Court stating: “An individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or she is harmed, even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to act.” In the fourth part I concentrate on the development, in Europe, of the only direct connections between individual persons and human rights enshrined in the highest law of the land or even beyond: first, the “Verfassungsbeschwerde” (constitutional complaint) first developed in Austria, particularly successful in Germany (commenting also on the different situation in France and in Great Britain); and second, the “Individualbeschwerde” (individual complaint) before the European Court of Human Rights, enabling the individual to appeal even against his or her own state for the protection of rights guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights.

Die Mitgliedschaft auf Lebensdauer im österreichischen Herrenhause, 1861–1918

Während schon seit einiger Zeit eine Studie zur erblichen Reichsratswürde in Österreich vorliegt, steht eine Untersuchung der zweiten bedeutenden Kategorie von Herrenhausmitgliedern, der vom Kaiser auf Lebensdauer ernannten Mitglieder, bisher aus). Immerhin sind in den 57 Jahren der Existenz des Herrenhauses 616 Ernennungen auf Lebensdauer ausgesprochen worden, denen 229 Berufungen auf erbliche Sitze gegenüberstehen). Es scheint daher legitim, eine Bestandsaufnahme der Mitgliedschaft auf Lebensdauer im Herrenhaus zu versuchen, den Motiven nachzugehen, die zur Schaffung dieser Würde geführt haben, und die Handhabung des Ernennungsrechtes durch die Krone zu analysieren. Eine solche Bestandsaufnahme bietet überdies, von einem bisher kaum benützten Blickfeld, einen reizvollen Querschnitt durch die franzisko-josephinische Epoche. Viele ihrer bedeutendsten, auch umstrittensten, jedenfalls aber charakteristischsten Persönlichkeiten finden sich unter den 615 Herrenhausmitgliedern auf Lebenszeit. Von Leo Thun und Anastasius Grün, beide unter den Erstberufenen des Jahres 1861, spannt sich der Bogen bis zu Conrad von Hötzendorf oder Moritz Benedikt, beide berufen durch den letzten Pairsschub im Frühjahr 1917; von Schmerling, dem Schöpfer des Herrenhauses, führt der Weg bis zu Heinrich Lammasch, der 1917 und 1918 im Herrenhause seine großen Friedensreden gehalten hat.