Constitutionalism as a category in the history of legal thought

It is indicated that the construction «constitutionalism» has quite firmly entered the circulation of modern science. The term «constitutionalism» has a humanitarian etymology, but today it is also actively used in the natural sciences. At the same time, the category «constitutionalism» mainly appears in humanities, and its most intensive use is carried out in legal science. It is noted that almost every modern state has a constitution in the sense of a constitutional structure and established procedures for conducting economic, social, political, legal and other affairs. But the existence of a constitution in the state does not allow us to speculate about its constitutionality. Despite this, the constitutionality of the state is by no means exhausted by the fact that there is a basic law in it, perhaps which establishes a certain compromise of socio­political forces, which establishes one or another state system and competence of authorities. Constitutionality is not limited to the fact that this basic law has a real and practical supremacy over the rest of the laws and can be changed only through a special law-making procedure. These are necessary but insufficient features of constitutionalism. A state can have a constitution, but there can be no constitutionalism, and vice versa. The authors conclude that, despite all the differences between the above models of constitutionalism, there are general principles that allow us to describe constitutionalism as a legal principle, namely: 1) the supremacy of legal laws and among them the constitution as the basic law; 2) legal guarantees of a person’s rights and freedoms; 3) institutional and legal organization of state power (horizontal and vertical distribution). Moreover, it is worth noting that the universality of these principles is connected precisely with the transition of Western society from a religious worldview to a rational picture of the world as early as the Renaissance and the New Age, which changes a person’s perception of the state and society, with the design of a classical liberal type of civil society, the emergence autonomous personality.