Contesting the Commonwealth: The Life and Social Legal Thought of Clemens France

Clemens J. France (1877-1959), a labour lawyer at the Port of Seattle, contributed substantially to the making of the 1922 Irish Free State Constitution. Notably, he advocated referendum and initiative measures similar to those used in the State of Washington. France also advocated egalitarian socio-economic development as a basis for genuine national independence. Ultimately, proposals for an 'economic commonwealth' and for direct democratic mechanisms met with very limited success. Their reception indicates the ideological, institutional, and interest-based constraints on constitutional engineering in post-revolutionary Ireland. France's unsuccessful interventions in Dublin are best understood in light of what Duncan Kennedy has described as 'the globalisation of social legal thought' in the early twentieth century. The goal of rethinking law as a purposive activity, newly designed to regulate laissez-faire capitalism, consistently underpinned France's socio-legal biography from the Municipal League in Progressive-era Seattle to his Directorship of Social Welfare in post-war Rhode Island. Retracing the Transatlantic life and social legal thought of Clemens France demonstrates the importance of rethinking apparently self-contained, national constitutional development as part of a broader, transnational exchange of legal institutions and ideas. It also suggests a role for legal life writing in shedding light on the apparently anonymous globalisation of legal ideas and institutions.