¹ Pasquino, P., Sieyès et l ’invention de la Constitution en France (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998)Google Scholar; Tuck, R., The Sleeping Sovereign (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

² Appleby, J., “America as a Model for the Radical French Reformers of 1789,” William and Mary Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1971): 267–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Craiutu, A., A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Israel, J., Revolutionary Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Troper, M. and Jaume, L., eds., 1789 et l’invention de la Constitution (Paris: LGDJ, 1994)Google Scholar.

³ The executive power was at that point in the hands of the king, but debate existed on its scope and extension.

⁴ The idea that the exercise of sovereignty coincided with legislation did not originate with the French Revolution. Revolutionaries often attributed it to Rousseau who, as Robespierre repeatedly remarked, argued that the legislative power had to be exercised by all citizens as it coincided with the essence of sovereignty.

⁵ Appleby, “America as a Model.”

⁶ Adams’ Defence was first planned to be translated in French in 1787, just weeks after the publication of its first volume in London. Yet it is interesting to note that the French translation did not see the light until 1792. On the reasons for this delay and the role some américanistes might have played in it see Appleby, J., “The Jefferson-Adams Rupture and the First French Translation of John Adams’ Defence,” American Historical Review 73, no. 4 (1968): 1084–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. What is known, however, is that the book arrived in Paris in February 1787 and was likely to be available to constituents in its English version.

⁷ Appleby, “The Jefferson-Adams Rupture.”

⁸ Pasquino, Sieyès et l ’invention de la Constitution, chap. 1; Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds, chap. 3.

⁹ Parts of this paragraph, especially some of the quotes and archival material, appeared in a previous article of mine. Citation here and throughout is by volume and page to Madival, J. and Laurent, E., Archives Parlementaires de 1789 à 1860: Recueil complet des débats législatifs & politiques des Chambres françaises (Paris: Librairie administrative de Paul Dupont, 1862)Google Scholar. All translations from French into English are mine.

¹⁰ For a reconstruction of this debate, see Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds; Pasquino, Sieyès et l ’invention de la Constitution; Griffiths, R., Le centre perdu: Malouet et les “monarchiens” dans la Révoution française (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1988)Google Scholar.

¹¹ For further analyses of how the radicals opposed the moderate side of the assembly see Jaume, L., Le discours Jacobin et la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 1989)Google Scholar and Hont, I., “The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: Nation State and Nationalism in Historical Perspective,” Political Studies 42 (2004): 166–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² On the reception of the American constitution and its bicameral system in France see Kurland, B. and Lerner, R., The Founders’ Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar, esp. sec. 12.

¹³ J. Appleby, “The Jefferson-Adams Rupture” and “America as a Model.”

¹⁴ For an extensive discussion of the Examen and of the battle of pamphlets on the American and English constitution see Appleby, “America as a Model.”

¹⁵ Condorcet, M., “Lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven à un citoyen de Virginie,” in Oeuvres de Condorcet, ed. O'Connor, A. Condorcet and Arago, M. F. (Paris: Firmit Didot Frères, 1847)Google Scholar, letter 4.

¹⁶ For a reconstruction of this argument see Appleby, “America as a Model.”

¹⁷ See, for example, Rabaud Saint Etienne on September 4, 1789 (AP, VIII, 567).

¹⁸ For instance, Lally Tollendal claimed on August 31, 1789, that even “the Americans, who are in such a small number … could not retain this simple government and this unity of powers that they had wanted to establish… . Even the unjust and inconsequential censor of Mr. Adams, Mr. Livingston, has agreed with him, even Mr. Livingston has written that wherever the legislative body is concentrated in a single assembly, it will necessarily end up absorbing all powers” (AP, VIII, 518). As Appleby explains, the response of most américanistes was to say that, in America, bicameralism has been introduced only because it was “a lesser evil.” This was to say that most American Founding Fathers recognized it as a biased institution, but had to accede to it for contingent reasons. See Appleby, “America as a Model,” 276.

¹⁹ For classic studies of Sieyès's life and oeuvre see Bastid, P., Sieyès et sa pensée (Paris: Hachette, 1970)Google Scholar; Forsyth, M., Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abbé Sieyès (New York: Leicester University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Bredin, J., Sieyès: La clé de la Révolution française (Paris: Edition de Fallois, 1988)Google Scholar; and, more recently, Pasquino, Sieyès et l’invention de la Constitution.

²⁰ Sieyès, E., Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?, in Oeuvres de Sieyès, ed. Dorigny, M. (Paris: EDHIS, 1989), 116Google Scholar.

²¹ As Bastid notes, even the longevity argument was relative for Sieyès, as he dated the origins of the English constitution to 1688 (Sieyès et sa pensée, 418).

²² Sieyès, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?, 16.

²³ Ibid., 6. See also E. Sieyès, “Déclaration volontaire proposée aux patriotes des 83 départements,” in Oeuvres de Sieyès.

²⁴ As mentioned above, most eminent américanistes saw the American constitutions (and especially the constitution of Pennsylvania that, at the time, was unicameral) as models to be copied in France. John Adams explicitly complained about this. See Appleby, “America as a Model,” 276.

²⁵ And he emphasizes that the Examen only came out in France after he published the first edition of Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?, thus suggesting that the book's arguments against England, although correctly reflecting his own thoughts, were not the basis for his critique of the model of balance of power.

²⁶ It is remarkable also because many américanistes capitulated on the question of the two chambers after 1791.

²⁷ As Guennifey explains, not all anglomane deputies wanted a second chamber representing the clergy and noblemen. Despite Brierre and Malouet's support for the latter, leaders such as Mounier and Lally-Tollendal seemed to reject the idea. They did argue in favor of the second chamber representing separate interests, but these did not have to overlap with those of the aristocracy. However, the opponents of bicameralism strategically cornered the anglomanes by claiming that their only aim was to reintroduce the privileges of the aristocracy. See Guennifey, P., “Constitution et intérêts sociaux: Le débat sur les deux chambres,” in 1789 et l’invention de la Constitution, ed. Troper, M. and Jaume, L. (Paris: LGDJ, 1994), 77–88Google Scholar. On the specific opinions of other members of the assembly see Furet, F. and Halévi, R., Orateurs de la Révolution (Paris: Gallimard, 1989)Google Scholar.

²⁸ E. Sieyès, “Opinion de Sieyès sur plusieurs articles des titres IV et V du projet de constitution,” in Oeuvres de Sieyès, 8.

²⁹ Sieyès, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?, 115.

³⁰ Barnave, A., De la révolution et de la constitution (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1988)Google Scholar. Interestingly, Barnave was among those who changed their mind on bicameralism in 1791. He argued that the times had changed and equality was now unanimously recognized as a foundational principle for France. Hence, the country was ready for the institution of a second chamber. See Gueniffey, “Constitution et intérêts sociaux,” 86–87.

³¹ Sieyès, “Opinion de Sieyès sur plusieurs articles,” 8.

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid., 9.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid., 8.

³⁶ Ibid., 9.

³⁷ Burke, E., A Letter to a Noble Lord (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Classics, 1914), 135Google Scholar.

³⁸ “Opinion de Sieyès sur plusieurs articles,” 4. On this see also Goldoni, M., “At the Origins of the Constitutional Review: Sieyès’ Constitutional Jury and the Taming of Constituent Power,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 32, no. 2 (2012): 211–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, section 2.

³⁹ E. Sieyès, “Déclaration volontaire,” 9. Among the few recent scholars to have engaged with Sieyès's critique of bicameralism is Aroney. However, his engagement is limited to refuting Sieyès's argument in favor of unitary representation of the nation. In doing so, Aroney raises interesting normative questions, but he also problematically collapses Sieyès's preference for unitary national representation with the Jacobin argument in favor of unitary popular sovereignty. See Aroney, N., “Four Reasons for an Upper House: Representative Democracy, Public Deliberation, Legislative Outputs and Executive Accountability,” Adelaide Law Review 29 (2008): 205–46Google Scholar. Similarly, scholars have read in Sieyès's preference for unity in the legislative body Rousseauvian influences. The historiography about Sieyès's relation to Rousseau is also relevant in this regard (see Backzo, B., “Le contrat social des Français: Sieyès et Rousseau,” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, ed. Lucas, Colin [Oxford: Pergamon, 1989]Google Scholar), but I side with Pasquino here (Sieyès et l’invention de la Constitution) in thinking that Sieyès's preference for unity is of Hobbesian, rather than Rousseauvian, origins and kind. For an analysis of Sieyès's rejection of Rousseau see Bastid, Sieyès et sa pensée, 308–9.

⁴⁰ Sieyès's fear of fragmentation of national unity is different from the radicals’. Both were against the subdivision of society into orders—as were most deputies at that point—and both feared that a second chamber might have reintroduced it. Yet Sieyès saw no problem in accepting that the representatives would reelaborate the will of the nation. Proof of that is his projects of electoral laws based on the principle of graduated promotion, which were meant to filter the direct expression of the people's power through several rounds of electoral competition. In fact, Sieyès actively sponsored the idea that the representatives, being experts in politics, should create the will of the nation by freely interpreting multiple and complex electoral mandates. He simply did not want part of this process to be organized according to the division into orders, and he feared that that would be inevitable with a second chamber. By contrast, the radicals’ main problem with bicameralism was that it would have asked the representatives to depart from their electoral mandates by forcing them to consider the will of another chamber. Hence, the radical problem was primarily that bicameralism distanced the will of the people from the actual lawmaking process. The fact that representation in the second chamber could have been aristocratic was certainly an annoying detail, but not key to their concerns.

⁴¹ “Opinion de Sieyès sur plusieurs articles,” 9.

⁴² It is interesting to note that in his discourse of 2 Thermidor Sieyès introduces a new criterion for the composition of the assembly: its members should come, in equal numbers, from rural industry, the industrie citadine, and the liberal professions (see E. Sieyès, “Discours du 2 Thermidor an III,” in Oeuvres de Sieyès). Many scholars have wondered about the origins of this proposal and Bastid has put forward what I think is a very interesting argument: the composition of the assembly according to professions derives from Sieyès's commitment to expertise and the division of labor. It is not meant to bring into the assembly the representation of different interests, but that of different types of expertise which, in Sieyès's mind, substantially contributed to the work of the assembly (see Bastid, Sieyès et sa pensée , 427).

⁴³ “Opinion de Sieyès sur plusieurs articles,” 9. In this quote one can see the influence that Adam Smith and his theory of the division of labor had on Sieyès's political thought. Just as in the context of representation, so too inside the assembly what pays off is the specific expertise that single individuals have in performing the task they have been assigned. From Smith, Sieyès takes the idea that, in modern societies, all tasks—including parliamentary activities—have to be subjected to the division of labor.

⁴⁴ Condorcet (“Lettres d'un bourgeois”) and La Rochefoucauld (AP, VIII, 548) proposed similar measures to separate deliberation within a unitary assembly.

⁴⁵ It has been argued that a unicameral legislative assembly divided into subcommittees amounts to a bicameral legislative system. I would resist this idea, at least in the context of Sieyès's writings. What mattered for him was that the law had to be submitted to just one voting and counting procedure. This could be achieved in his system because the various committees would factually vote together as parts of a single chamber, as their votes would all contribute to the same count. By contrast, bicameral systems always hold separate votes as well as separate counts. The communal or separate voting procedure is what, for Sieyès, distinguished unicameral from bicameral systems. Another concurring explanation is offered by Bastid, who notes that having committees discussing and voting in separate physical spaces was, for Sieyès, a way of limiting power within unicameral assemblies. This separation would have restrained the power of demagogy and would have allowed the best of each member to come out in the discussion, as the small size of the committees would have made debating easier. This, Bastid argues, is also confirmed by the fact that in his Projet de déclaration volontaire, Sieyès discusses the proviso for separate committees in an article titled “Sur l'unité du corps des représentants.” See Sieyès, “Déclaration volontaire,” and Bastid, Sieyès et sa pensée, 423.

⁴⁶ Parts of this paragraph, especially some of the quotes and archival material, appeared in a previous article of mine. Equally, a complete analysis of the implications of Sieyès's preference for constituent power against sovereignty were the subject of a previous article (Rubinelli, “How to Think beyond Sovereignty: On Sieyès and Constituent Power,” European Journal of Political Theory, April 2016, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1474885116642170). As I show in this earlier article, this criticism also applied to the radicals’ theory of popular sovereignty and is one of the elements of contradiction between Sieyès's critique of bicameralism and the radicals. I disagree with Bredin on the relevance of Sieyès's critique of sovereignty for his rejection of bicameralism. He differs from me in maintaining that bicameralism was rejected by Sieyès because it was contrary to national sovereignty (see Bredin, Sieyès: La clé de la Révolution française, 507).

⁴⁷ E. Sieyès, “Bases de l'ordre social,” in Sieyès et l’invention de la Constitution en France, by P. Pasquino (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998), 198.

⁴⁸ E. Sieyès, “Preliminaire de la constitution,” in Oeuvres de Sieyès, 35.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Sieyès first introduced the idea of constitutional jury in his speech of 2 Thermidor, Year III (see “Discours du 2 Thermidor an III”). As Goldoni, in “At the Origins of the Constitutional Review,” clearly explains, Sieyès's constitutional jury had the power to exercise a form of ex ante control: it could not revoke laws but could check the acts of the lawmaking bodies. This control would apply to the acts of the electoral assemblies, of primary assemblies, and of the Court of Cassation. However, Goldoni joins Pasquino, Sieyès et l’invention de la Constitution, and Bastid, Sieyès et sa pensée, in arguing that it is not completely clear what exact control function Sieyès wanted to attribute to the jury, as he seemed to contradict himself in several passages. In addition, the jury also had two other functions: improving the constitution and working as an institute of equity jurisdiction. For more, see E. Sieyès, “Opinion de Sieyès sur les attributions et l'organisation du jury constitutionnaire proposé le 2 Thermidor,” in Oeuvres de Sieyès. Against both Goldoni and Pasquino, , Troper, M., “Sieyès et le jury constiutionnaire,” in Mélanges en l'honneur de Pierre Avril: La République (Paris: Montchretien, 2001)Google Scholar argues that the functions of the jury cannot be assimilated to those of contemporary constitutional courts.

⁵¹ Sieyès, “Declaration volontaire,” 17. Interestingly, in his Thermidorian speeches Sieyès maintains a single chamber but introduces a Tribunat with the sole task of proposing laws (see “Discours du 2 Thermidor an III”). This, Sieyès makes clear, does not amount to a legislative body and hence cannot be compared to a second chamber. This is because, as Bastid explains, the creation of a Tribunat is simply due to Sieyès's preference for clearly separating tasks. In this way, the Tribunat would be tasked with proposing laws, the executive with executing them, and the legislative would retain the most important role, which is that of deciding what, among the several proposals, is the will of the nation. This and only this is the legislative task and has to be performed by a unitary assembly. For a discussion of this point see Bastid, Sieyès et sa pensée, 424.

⁵² “Opinion de Sieyès sur plusieurs articles,” 11.

⁵³ E.g., Shell, D., “The History of Bicameralism,” Journal of Legislative Studies 7, no. 1 (2001): 5–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁴ Even though it is tempting, today, to see the influence of money in politics as reproducing similar logics. And certainly, the problem of class division and its disproportionate representation in parliament remained a long debated issue in European countries throughout the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries and is still relevant today.