Constitutionalism, Nationalism & the Dismantling of Democracy. Part Three.

The 20th Century, with its’ wars, revolutions & collapsing empires, required a corresponding legal revolution to account for the plethora of new states, renewed states & altered states. But how was this to be accomplished or achieved while maintaining legal state integrity and sovereignty?

Peter Winn-Brown
16 min readAug 23, 2024
Judith & the head of Holofernes by Gustav Klimt.
Judith & the Head of Holofernes (1901); by Austrian symbolist artist Gustav Klimt. Klimt, a contemporary & friend of Hans Kelsen, was one of the founders & progenitors of the Viennese Secession artistic movement that provided an outlet for unconventional artists to showcase their work outside of the more traditional & recognised academy format.

‘Different conditions of knowledge exist for jurisprudence, than for history or politics,’ accordingly the disciplines understood a states ‘hour of birth and date of demise’ differently.

Austria, the country of Adolf Merkl’s birth, provided a paradigmatic example. Where a historian or politician perceived one and the same ‘Austria’ stretching back over over hundred’s of years, the jurist was forced to recognise not one entity but several.

‘My object of cognition, the Austrian state, has not simply altered itself in this century or even millennium — no, its juridical being has become a different one, its identity has been overturned.’

Natasha Wheatley, The Life & Death of States (1), and references therein from Adolf Merkl.

The making of a…

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Peter Winn-Brown
Peter Winn-Brown

Written by Peter Winn-Brown

The past can illuminate the present if we shine the light of inquiry openly, truthfully, with attention to detail & care for the salient facts.

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