Sophistry Prevails in Luxembourg

Constitutional reforms should be organic, not revolutionary

By Christopher B. Lacaria

Luxembourg is a land of tradition. The tiny neighbor of Belgium and the Netherlands is ruled by a Grand Duke, the last such title in the world, a throwback to the time when the country was one of a hundred-odd states of the Holy Roman Empire. Aside from French and German, the local patois, Luxemburgish—a hybrid peculiar to its 1,000 square miles—enjoys official de jure status. Luxembourg even owes its very existence to an ancient peculiar tradition. The country achieved independence in 1890 when the King of the Netherlands, who also had held the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, died without a male heir; the Salic Law in effect for the Grand Duchy disinherited the Dutch heiress presumptive in favor of a distant cousin.

But this pleasant image of a traditional dynastic state, whose sovereignty was not predicated on ethnic prejudices or a hasty plebiscite but on the people’s ancient allegiance to the ruling family, was dispelled ignominiously earlier this month. 

The Grand Duke, less of a figurehead than most of his fellow constitutional monarchs, informed his parliament that he would not assent to their recently-enacted decree legalizing euthanasia. Despite the Grand Duke’s principled reluctance, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose party opposed the bill in question, nevertheless concluded that the prince had overstepped his authority.

“I understand the Grand Duke’s problems of conscience,” Juncker told the press, “but I believe that if the parliament votes in a law, it must be brought into force.” To remedy this situation, Mr. Juncker’s parliament will strip the Grand Duke of his executive authority, thus preventing him from vetoing the legislation, which passed the chamber by a mere four-vote margin.

Perhaps one could almost understand the prime minister’s absurd conclusion, had Luxembourg been an isolated, provincial backwater, the fate of many a landlocked, militarily impotent microstate. But Luxembourg in fact sits atop international rankings for literacy and per capita income, a financial-services center with a cosmopolitan populace. Even to political observers, Mr. Juncker’s comments might seem routine, if not particularly brave—since most such observers would no doubt consider a “Grand Duke” an outdated and inappropriate feature of a modern progressive democracy. 

Mr. Juncker’s remarks betray an utter ignorance of politics and his country’s own constitution. Luxembourg, like most countries in this age, indeed has a written constitution, dating from 1868 and amended since. But a country’s constitution is more than the written charter of fundamental laws, as the word in the American vernacular almost exclusively denotes. Luxembourg’s constitution, even in the American meaning of a founding political charter, gives the Grand Duke an important role in the legislative and executive process, for, until these changes take effect, his assent gave the laws their force. For the prime minister to assume therefore that the Grand Duke’s veto threatened to thwart unduly the legislative process demonstrates a facile grasp of his country’s own politics.

A constitution is a country’s political arrangement, its regime; it defines the distribution of office and what it means to be a “citizen.” And as politics not only reflects, but also influences a people’s social arrangements, institutions, and closely-held principles, a constitution transcends our relatively narrow, modern view—indeed, it encompasses a people’s entire way of life. The Greeks, founders of political philosophy, thought in terms of the πολιτεία—the art of the πόλις, the city—which did not acknowledge the ascendant academic distinction between “state” and “society.”

One rightly may complain when his desired political outcome does not succeed in maneuvering the legislative process—especially if the defeat is owed to some relatively minor technicality, such as a grand ducal veto, a prerogative that had not been invoked since 1912. And indeed prudence might recommend a revision to certain constitutional arrangements. But a country’s constitution—the political foundation on which the society and its laws are supported—ought not be changed with haste, without good cause, or outside of the prescribed processes of amendment. When political passions and disrespect for customary arrangements gain sway, anarchy does not tarry to ensue.

Anarchy—as in the mayhem of post-invasion Baghdad or post-Katrina New Orleans—obviously will not prevail in Luxembourg. But potentially an equally grave phenomenon threatens the Luxembourgish body politic. 

A political system where the law may change through irregular or even illegal processes, at the whim of ever-fickle popular opinion, can engender no real respect for its authority. The more observant will realize that justice or right is not the goal or motivating force for the legislative power, but rather pandering, prejudice, and pure demagoguery. 

Constitutional reforms, as Burke rightly observed some centuries before, are necessary because change is the method of preservation for political systems that must adapt to the shifting circumstances in this world of flux. But they must be moderate, deliberate, and, most importantly, they must be necessary. 

The prime minister’s proposed constitutional revisions not only seem particularly hasty, but also a bit extreme. That his parliament’s authority could be kept within its constitutionally-prescribed limits offends the feckless premier, who could not have even rallied his ruling coalition to derail a bill his party technically opposed. The only solution to such a difficulty, therefore, is radically to alter the constitution on the implicit premise that a parliamentary majority more accurately represents right reason and the popular will than the more nuanced arrangement already in place.

Progressives have already begun painting this constitutional revolution as an uncontroversial and salutary fact, and even dare to tar the Grand Duke as the unreasonable actor in the affair. François Bausch, the leader of the country’s Green Party, expressed “hope that the Grand Duke will respect the consensus which has always prevailed in Luxembourg.” Such ideologues consider pandering to popular passions a wiser, more just, and more prudent course of action, especially since in this instance it favors their radical agenda. 

But popular opinion, so susceptible to irrational surges of enthusiasm and prejudice, often would not favor the most equitable and judicious political decisions. Constitutional mechanisms, such as the grand ducal veto, serve to temper these passions, so that the country’s laws will not be helpless and at the mercy of wild swings of popular sentiment. And even if the parliament’s four-vote endorsement of the euthanasia bill truly represented the will of the people, that ought not be sufficient to carry the day. The Grand Duke has a moral obligation before God to uphold justice in his dominions, and to have assented to what he rightly deemed an unjust proclamation would have been an unconscionable action. For his scruples, he will be rewarded with a summary usurpation of his constitutional and customary authority. The people—or, more correctly, the people’s elected representatives—have spoken, and no Grand Duke or antiquated idea of “justice” will stand in their way.

The Luxembourgish case, while perhaps peripheral to our current debates, calls attention to the poverty of contemporary political discourse. Fashionable ideological positions, in this instance euthanasia, can circumvent the established political process with vain appeals to supportive popular opinion. This imagined “consensus,” whether or not it accords with sound reason or important customs and traditions, seems even in America to override any other concern. But where the constitutional stop-gaps—like the presidential veto—are wielded by an executive at least somewhat accountable to popular prejudices, opposition to legislative whim is not entirely disdained. Most importantly, to Luxembourgish and American alike, however, is to be mindful that moderate, “mixed” government requires that the “will of the people” be thwarted at some junctures and for good reasons. The common good is not always or most often consonant with the current ideological fads.

The Luxembourgish parliamentarians, in their haste further to dismantle Christian civilization and give burdensome ailing elderly good cause to fear for their life, ought to have greater respect for their superiors and his conscientious objections. But, in an age as decadent as ours, good manners are the first to go.