Since the Revolution, French constitutionalism has established an original pattern of constitutional guarantee. Fearing that judges might try to curb the legislator’s will, as the Ancien Régime courts of justice had done by invoking ‘fundamental laws’, the French constituants established that ordinary judges would not be allowed ‘directly or indirectly to take any part in the exercise of legislative power nor to prevent or suspend the execution of the decrees of the legislative body, sanctioned by the King’ (16–24 August 1790 Act, Title II, Art. 10 (Fr)) [First lines]