LAUSR

ABSTRACT This article examines the important contributions to the scholarship of Benjamin Straumann’s Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution. Straumann argues that Cicero elaborated a notion of constitutionalism that contains important proto-liberal ideas. In focusing so intently on tracing the appeal to natural rights in constitutional thinking, Straumann excludes from his analysis important reflections on the Roman constitution which do not rely on natural rights, but which still elaborate important and influential features of constitutionalism such as institutions and safeguards. Straumann’s narrow focus appears to induce him to reject the possibility that Machiavelli has anything worthwhile to contribute to an understanding of the Roman constitution and thus to miss the impact that the Florentine had on later thinkers in the very constitutional tradition that Straumann is so intent to highlight and explicate.