The December Constitution (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

: ''Dezemberverfassung'') is a set of six acts that served as the

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princip ...

of the

Cisleithania Cisleithania, also ''Zisleithanien'' sl, Cislajtanija hu, Ciszlajtánia cs, Předlitavsko sk, Predlitavsko pl, Przedlitawia sh-Cyrl-Latn, Цислајтанија, Cislajtanija ro, Cisleithania uk, Цислейтанія, Tsysleitaniia it, Cislei ...

n half of

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

. The acts were proclaimed by

Emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother ( e ...

Franz Joseph Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (german: Franz Joseph Karl, hu, Ferenc József Károly, 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until hi ...

on 21 December 1867 and functioned as the supreme law of the land until the collapse of the empire in 1918. Five of the Constitution's acts were replaced by the Federal Constitutional Law between 1918 and 1920; the sixth law, a

bill of rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pri ...

, is still in force.

Content

The December Constitution consists of *a law expanding the powers of the Imperial Council;Gesetz vom 21. December 1867, wodurch das Grundgesetz über die Reichsvertretung vom 26. Februar 1861 abgeändert wird
RGBl. 141/1867 *the Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals (''Staatsgrundgesetz über die allgemeinen Rechte der Staatsbürger''), a

;Staatsgrundgesetz vom 21. December 1867, über die allgemeinen Rechte der Staatsbürger
RGBl. 142/1867 *the Basic Law Establishing a Supreme Court of the Empire (''Staatsgrundgesetz über die Einsetzung eines Reichsgerichts'');Staatsgrundgesetz vom 21. December 1867, über die Einsetzung eines Reichsgerichts
RGBl. 143/1867 *the Basic Law on the Judiciary (''Staatsgrundgesetz über die richterliche Gewalt''), a law establishing an independent court system;Staatsgrundgesetz vom 21. December 1867, über die richterliche Gewalt
RGBl. 144/1867 *the Basic Law on the Executive (''Staatsgrundgesetz über die Ausübung der Regierungs- und Vollzugsgewalt'');Staatsgrundgesetz vom 21. December 1867, über die Ausübung der Regierungs- und Vollzugsgewalt
RGBl. 145/1867 *the Delegation Law, a law regulating relations between the Cisleithanian and

Transleithania The Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen ( hu, a Szent Korona Országai), informally Transleithania (meaning the lands or region "beyond" the Leitha River) were the Hungarian territories of Austria-Hungary, throughout the latter's entire exis ...

n legislatures.Gesetz vom 21. December 1867, betreffend die allen Ländern der österreichischen Monarchie gemeinsamen Angelegenheiten
RGBl. 146/1867 The Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals is a

stipulating, among other things,

equality before the law Equality before the law, also known as equality under the law, equality in the eyes of the law, legal equality, or legal egalitarianism, is the principle that all people must be equally protected by the law. The principle requires a systematic r ...

for all the empire's ethnicities (articles 1, 2, 3, and 19), the end of all forms of

serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which develo ...

(art. 7),

freedom of the press Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exerci ...

(art. 13),

freedom of religion Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedo ...

(articles 14 and 15),

freedom of assembly Freedom of peaceful assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their collective or shared id ...

(article 12), and

secrecy of correspondence __NOTOC__ The secrecy of correspondence (german: Briefgeheimnis, french: secret de la correspondance) or literally translated as secrecy of letters, is a fundamental legal principle enshrined in the constitutions of several European countries. It ...

(art. 10). It also established a limited form of

due process Due process of law is application by state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to the case so all legal rights that are owed to the person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual pe ...

; under the Basic Law, a person could not be arbitrarily deprived of the freedom of their person (art. 8), their property (art. 5), or the inviolability of their home (art. 9). The Basic Law of the Judiciary stipulated the separation of administration and judiciary and the independence of the courts. It also guaranteed the right of the people to participate in the administration of criminal justice; serious crimes would from now on require

trial by jury A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significa ...

. Last but not least, the Law established a system administrative courts, making executive acts of government subject to judicial review. The Delegation Law affirmed and ratified, for the Cisleithanian party to the conflict, the main outcome of the

Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (german: Ausgleich, hu, Kiegyezés) established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Compromise only partially re-established the former pre-1848 sovereignty and status of the Kingdom of Hungar ...

: Cisleithania and Transleithania would act as a single monolithic entity for the purposes of international law; they would have a joint diplomatic service, a joint foreign office, and joint armed forces. Otherwise, the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephe ...

would be a fully independent separate country. The remaining laws dealt mainly with procedural details and miscellanea such as the immunity of Imperial Council delegates.

Genesis

Until 1848, the

Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central- Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...

was an

absolute monarchy Absolute monarchy (or Absolutism as a doctrine) is a form of monarchy in which the monarch rules in their own right or power. In an absolute monarchy, the king or queen is by no means limited and has absolute power, though a limited constituti ...

with no written constitution and no modern concept of the rule of law. In 1848, a wave of revolutions swept Austria; the revolutionaries demanded, among other things,

constitutionalism Constitutionalism is "a compound of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law". Political organizations are constitutional ...

and

. By 15 March, Emperor

Ferdinand I Ferdinand I or Fernando I may refer to: People * Ferdinand I of León, ''the Great'' (ca. 1000–1065, king from 1037) * Ferdinand I of Portugal and the Algarve, ''the Handsome'' (1345–1383, king from 1367) * Ferdinand I of Aragon and Sicily, '' ...

had been forced to promise to meet these demands. On 25 April, pursuant to this promise, Ferdinand proclaimed the Pillersdorf Constitution, named after its principal framer, Minister of the Interior Baron Franz von Pillersdorf. The Pillersdorf Constitution, written essentially by the cabinet with no consultation of any kind of elected council, was widely seen as inadequate and did nothing to stem the tide of revolutionary unrest. In December, Ferdinand was forced to abdicate. Among other desperate measures, he had already declared the constitution "provisional" in May and completely scrapped it in July. Ferdinand's successor,

, was determined to reassert absolute monarchy. By March 1849, he had taken back the streets and mostly neutralized the intellectuals. He still needed to sideline the revolutionaries' unauthorised constitutional assembly, the Kremsier Parliament, which had promulgated its own draft constitution, the Kremsier Constitution. Between 4 and 7 March, to preempt the Kremsier Parliament, he proclaimed his March Constitution, seemingly giving in to most of the Kremsier demands. The Kremsier Parliament dealt with, he revoked his own constitution with the 31 December 1851 New Year's Eve Patent. No written constitution left in force, Austria was once again an absolute monarchy. The empire, and with it the personal authority of the Emperor, was severely weakened by a series of diplomatic setbacks, the rise of civic nationalism, and the growing disaffection of the empire's Hungarian and Slavic subjects with the Habsburgs' rule. By 1860, Franz Joseph was forced to formally share power again. A new constitution, the 1860 October Diploma, granted more autonomy to the provinces and strengthened regional nobility; regional legislative and administrative authority would partially lie with each region's respective aristocracy. The October diploma proved to be too little, too late: it neither satisfied the nobles nor, in particular, the people of the

. The 1861

February Patent The February Patent was a constitution of the Austrian Empire promulgated in the form of letters patent on 26 February 1861. Background In the Austrian Empire, the early 1860s were a period of significant constitutional reforms. The revolutions ...

made further concessions, again failing to pacify Hungary. Hungary had come close to independence during the 1848 revolutions, had been beaten into submission only with the help of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

, and had lived under what effectively was a military dictatorship ever since. In 1866, Austria was defeated in the

Austro-Prussian War The Austro-Prussian War, also by many variant names such as Seven Weeks' War, German Civil War, Brothers War or Fraternal War, known in Germany as ("German War"), (; "German war of brothers") and by a variety of other names, was fought in 186 ...

and lost its claim to being the leading

state, plunging the Habsburg dynasty and their German-speaking realms into an unprecedented identity crisis. The monarch's moral authority gravely damaged once more, unrest in Hungary threatened to erupt again. His back to the wall, Franz Joseph saw no choice but grant Hungary all but full independence in the

. To prevent the empire's non-Hungarian ethnicities from demanding similar levels of autonomy, Franz Joseph then had to return to constitutionalism and vest the empire's peoples with participation rights in the legislative and administrative process.

Abrogation

As a result of Austria's defeat in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, Austria-Hungary collapsed in October 1918. Both the

and the Slavic provinces of Cisleithania broke away from the German-speaking core lands to form modern

nation state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may i ...

s. Many of the institutions established by the December Constitution collapsed; in particular, the Imperial Council could no longer function. Many of the provisions of the Constitution became moot outright. It was obvious the emerging rump state would need a new legal framework. On 21 October 1918, parliamentarians from the German-speaking regions convened to form a Provisional National Assembly (''Provisorische Nationalversammlung'') to manage this transition. On 30 October, the Assembly proclaimed a provisional constitution. The provisional constitution did little more than establish the Assembly as a provisional parliament, establish the parliament's three-member

presidium A presidium or praesidium is a council of executive officers in some political deliberative assembly, assemblies that collectively administers its business, either alongside an individual President (government title), president or in place of one ...

as the provisional head of state, and set up a provisional cabinet. Even so, most of the articles of the December Constitution were thus implicitly abrogated. did not include any catalogue of basic rights, although it was followed on the same day by a resolution abolishing censorship and establishing freedom of the press, leaving the Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals on the books. General elections on 16 February 1919 replaced the Provisional Assembly with a Constitutional Assembly (Konstituierende Nationalversammlung). On 1 October 1920, the Assembly passed the Federal Constitutional Law, confirming and formalizing the abrogation of the December Constitution. The Law not containing any new bill of rights either, the Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals in still in force. Together with the 1955

Austrian State Treaty The Austrian State Treaty (german: Österreichischer Staatsvertrag ) or Austrian Independence Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state. It was signed on 15 May 1955 in Vienna, at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying p ...

and the 1955

European Convention on Human Rights The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by t ...

, ratified by Austria in 1958 and part of the country's body of constitutional law since 1964, it serves as Austria's

to this day. In particular, the promise of equality in Austria's current constitution is modelled on the analogue provision in the statute.

Literature

* Berchtold, Klaus (1998): ''Verfassungsgeschichte der Republik Österreich.'' Springer. Vienna, Austria. . * Brauneder, Wilhelm (2005): ''Österreichische Verfassungsgeschichte. 10. Auflage.'' Manz. Vienna, Austria. . * Öhlinger, Theo and Eberhard, Harald (2014): ''Verfassungsrecht. 9., überarbeitete Auflage.'' Facultas. Vienna, Austria. * Walter, Friedrich (1970): ''Die österreichische Zentralvewaltung. III. Abteilung. Von der Märzrevolution 1848 bis zur Dezemberverfassung 1867. Band 3. Die Geschichte der Ministerien vom Durchbruch des Absolutismus bis zum Ausgleich mit Ungarn und zur Konstitutionalisierung der österreichischen Länder 1852 bis 1867.'' Holzhausen. Vienna, Austria. No ISBN.

References

{{Authority control Politics of Austria-Hungary Constitutional history of Austria Constitutions of former countries 1867 in Austria-Hungary 1867 in politics 1867 in law