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This book of legal philosophy contends that positive law is better understood if it is not too easily equated with power, force, or command. Law is more a matter of discourse and deliberation than of sheer decision or of power relations. Here is thought-provoking reading for lawyers, advocates, scholars of jurisprudence, students of law, philosophy and political science, and general readers concerned with the future of the constitutional state.

La Constitución de los Antiguos puede considerarse básicamente una situación institucional en la cual a un centro de poder soberano que tiene su propia ontología y dinámica, y en cierta medida su propia justificación, se acompaña un cuerpo de reglas dirigidas a limitar, a controlar y a racionalizar las actuaciones de aquel poder soberano. Éste preexiste a la constitución, y es además su garante fáctico. El constitucionalismo de los Modernos hace que el contraste tradicional entre constitucionalismo y democracia resulte en gran medida obsoleto ya que la comunidad política y con ella el Estado y el Derecho son el producto de una acción de los ciudadanos. El constitucionalismo es el proceso de tal iniciativa "desde abajo". En este artículo se distinguen estas dos visiones del constitucionalismo y su posición respecto al estado de excepción ; Ancient constitution could be considered basically an institutional situation where a center of sovereign power, with its own ontology and dynamics, and in certain extent its own justification, is enclosed in a body of rules addressed to limiting, controlling and rationalizing the actions of that sovereign power. This one pre-exists to the constitution and it is also its factual guarantor. Modern constitutionalism makes the traditional contrast between constitutionalism and democracy obsolete to a great extent because the political community and with that also the State and the Law are the output of citizens' participation. Constitutionalism is the process of that initiative "from the bottom". This is the view defended by neoconstitutionalism. This article antlines and discusses that stance in relation to the state of emergency.