The Spirit of the Laws is, without question, one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete, scholarly En

The Spirit of the Laws—Montesquieu’s huge, complex, and enormously influential work—is considered one of the central texts of the Enlightenment, laying th

In what constitutes the only English-language collection of essays ever dedicated to the analysis of Montesquieu's contributions to political science, the contr

The Spirit of the Laws not only systematizes the foundational ideas of “separation of powers” and “balances and checks,” it provides the decisive respon

Montesquieu is famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Wes