This lecture establishes the ten essentials of modern constitutionalism, as first developed in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776.
It shows how these essentials gained ground in the evolving American constitutions up to the mid-nineteenth century and how they spread over to Europe in 1789, where the theoretical foundation of modern constitutionalism was established. The lecture also develops a revisionist approach to the established preeminence of the American and French constitutional traditions and argue for a more global perspective.
