French Constitutional Law of 1940

The French Constitutional Law of 1940 is a set of bills that were voted into law on 10 July 1940 by the National Assembly, which comprised both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies during the French Third Republic. The law established the Vichy regime and passed with 569 votes to 80, with 20 abstentions. The group of 80 parliamentarians who voted against it are known as the Vichy 80. The law gave all the government powers to Philippe Pétain, and further authorized him to take all necessary measures to write a new constitution. Pétain interpreted this as de facto suspending the French Constitutional Laws of 1875 which established the Third Republic, even though the law did not explicitly suspend it, but only granted him the power to write a new constitution. The next day, by Act No 2, Pétain defined his powers and abrogated all the laws of the Third Republic that were incompatible with them.

Although given full constituent powers by the law, Pétain never promulgated a new constitution. A draft was written in 1941 and signed by Pétain in 1944, but it was never submitted or ratified.

The Ordinance of 9 August 1944 was an ordinance promulgated by the Provisional Government of the French Republic after D-Day asserting the nullity of the Constitutional Law of 1940 and other classes of law passed later by Vichy. The Constitution of 1940 was not repealed or annulled but rather declared void ab initio.

Application
On the basis of this act, Marshal Pétain progressively instituted a new regime through a dozen constitutional acts issued between 1940 and 1942. However, a new Constitution was never declared. In positive law, although these acts put a de facto end to the Third Republic, the act of July 10, 1940, as well as all the constitutional acts taken in its application, were declared null and void in 1944, as the regime had never lawfully existed.