Solon, Plutarch informs us, described himself as standing ‘‘with a mighty
shield’’ in front of both classes and preventing either from prevailing un-
justly’’ (Perrin 1989 , 453 ; Wormuth 1949 , 4 , 20 ). However, a power politics
analysis of Solon’s constitution-making eVorts, such as Holmes suggests,
would locate the origin and success of Athens’ constitution less in the willed
solution of this extraordinaryWgure than in the answer to the question of
power sharing or of how and why the wealthy chose to embrace such a self-
limiting discipline of a power-sharing arrangement with the propertyless.
In the later Middle Ages, elements of a complex constitutional discourse
developed out of such separable languages as that of the Bible, Ciceronianism,
revived Aristotleanism, and the Roman law. Within this discourse, diVerent
answers to the question of the best constitution or the locus of sovereignty
could be generated. The relationship between king and law was perhaps the
greatest problematic of constitutional theory and practice. At its core lay the
problem of sovereignty and it was contested precisely because, in both theory
and practice, the authority of king and law depended on each other. That is,
in the language of Roman law, the king was subject to the laws’ moral force—
via directiva—but not to their coercive force—via coactiva(Justinian 527 – 34 ,
I. 14. 4 ). Such a view, ascribed to Henry de Bracton and chieXy composed in
the 1220 s and 1230 s, coexisted within the political languages of both Roman
and English law such that the very locution of king (rex) was connected
etymologically with right rule (recte regere) (Black 1992 , 136 , 140 – 1 ). In
Bracton’s words: ‘‘The King must not be under man but under God and
under the law, because law makes the King. Let him therefore bestow upon
the law what the law bestows upon him, namely rule and power, for there is
no rex where will rules rather than lex’’ (Bracton 1968 , 33 ).
The belief that the king did not simply rulebylaw but must himself be seen
morally and politically constrained by it on this view enhanced rather than
simply restricted his power and served to generate voluntary cooperation of
the powerful families and societal networks within his realm. This idea of a
king both limited and empowered by the ruleoflaw is further articulated in
Fortescue’sWfteenth-century terms,dominium regale et politicum. However,
the actual constitutional restriction of the king’s dominium by law in England
required a decisive shift in the power system between the Crown and Parlia-
ment not undertaken until the seventeenth century. It was achieved not by
Charles I’s strategic self-limitation in order to acquire political cooperation,
but rather in his failure to so, by his submission to force at the foot of the
324 shannon c. stimson