NEW CORE WORKING PAPER: The Treaties of Utrecht and Norm Hierarchy [Les traités d'Utrecht et la hiérarchie des normes]

The CORE Working Paper series published a text of mine (in French) on the Treaties of Utrecht and Norm Hierarchy, examining into detail the question of Philip V of Spain's renunciation to the French throne.

Abstract:

The act of registration of the lettres patentes of Louis XIV on 15 March 1713, which renounced Philip V’s right to the throne of France and also the rights of the dukes of Berry and Orléans to the throne of Spain, is usually presented as a violation of the fundamental law of indisposability of the Crown. Even with internal implications for France and ensuing contemporary debate that was framed in those terms, it is nonetheless important to highlight its practical juristic logic with regard to international relations. Renunciations marked a vital element in the equilibrium of European state relations and they allowed to avoid excessive concentration of power. The Regency’s diplomacy sought to extend the solutions contained within the Utrecht treaties (11 April 1713) to other cases of potential war, in Italy. As a result, the mentioned registration of renunciation touched upon two conflicts of norms instead of one. On the one hand, the monarch’s lettres patentes conflicted with the lois fondamentales. On the other hand, the law of treaties was at odds with the internal laws of France. Not only the negotiations leading up to the peace treaties, but also the subsequent interpretation of those treaties demonstrate an alternative, apocryphal but coherent, juristic discourse, the understanding of which is indispensable for a proper analysis of their global implications.

The text is an earlier, extended version (written as a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, 2014-2015) of a paper forthcoming in a collective work directed by Nicolas Laurent-Bonne (Clermont-Ferrand) and Xavier Prévost (Bordeaux), Penser l'ordre juridique médiéval et moderne (Lextenso, later on this year). The final version, which will also consider complementary sources, can thus be found there.

See also SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2790983.