In 2008, France celebrated the fi ftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. 1 It was also the year of the largest modifi cation to the Constitution to date. On 12 July 2007, then President Nicolas Sarkozy announced what he called ‘the need for changes’; 2 the key term he used in this announcement was ‘modernisation’. The year 2008 was therefore an ambivalent time: a time for celebrating one of the longest-lasting French Constitutions (only the Constitution of the Monarchy 3 and the Constitution of the Third Republic 4 survived more than fi fty years) and a time in which it was more widely recognised that this established Constitution needed updating. Whether or not one agreed with President Sarkozy’s desire to ‘modernise’ the institutions, and whether there was in fact a real need for modernisation of the Constitution itself, it is clear that 2008 witnessed a key moment in French constitutional history. However, the changing dynamics of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic have been neither the result of recent developments nor entirely the result of the 2008 constitutional act. 5 For a while now, the social, economic, environmental and historical contexts have infl uenced the Constitution to the extent that they have penetrated not only the text itself but also its spirit – the idea of ‘the Republic’ as it has evolved in relation to philosophy, which has made it what it means today.