1. According to J. Blondel, Tsarist Russia at the time of World War I is a typical example of a state observing legality having lost its legitimacy. It is possible that a new regime established at the start of the transition period could have been legitimate without observing the imperatives of legality. However, a conflict between legitimacy and legality cannot result in the stability of political regimes even if the government mobilizes propaganda and attempts to manipulate public opinion through legitimating or justifying deviations from legality. See J. Blondel, Comparative Government: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (London, Prentice Hall 1995) pp. 62–66.
2. See E.S. Corwin, ‘The “Higher Law” Background of American Constitutional Law’, in R. Loss, ed., Corwin on the Constitution (Ithaca, Cornell University Press 1981) pp. 79–140. Exploring the rudimentary forms of legitimacy during premodernity and absolutism is related to the reason of state doctrine, see F. Meinecke, Machiavellianism, the Doctrine of Raison d’Etat and its Place in Modern History (London, Transaction Publishers 1998); C.J. Friedrich, Constitutional Reason of State: The Survival of the Constitutional Order (Providence, Brown University Press 1957) pp. 4–5.
3. H. J. Berman, Law and Revolution, the Formation of Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1983) pp. 536–537.
4. In 1368 Edward the Third’s 42nd statute provided that the Magna Carta ‘be holden and kept in all Points; and if there be any statute, made to the contrary, it shall be holden for none’, cited in A.E.D. Howard, The Road from Runnymede, Magna Carta and Constitutionalism in America (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press 1968) p. 9. In Tudor times the Magna Carta became dormant and the king did not aspire towards the conformity of his acts with the Magna Carta, see also A.E.D. Howard, Magna Carta, Text and Commentary (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press 1999) p. 25. It would take centuries, however, to establish the principle by Sir E. Coke in the Bonham Case in 1610 that the common law is superior and should be observed as a prerequisite for the validity of all legal acts, see Bonham case of 1610, reproduced in M. Cappelletti and W. Cohen, Comparative Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials (Charlottesville, Bobbs-Merrill 1979) pp. 9–10.
5. A different approach to the problem of constitutional safeguards for legitimacy and legality might be developed if we look at constitutions through the concept developed by conservative theory where the concept of the real constitution has been associated with the specific conditions, mentalities, inclinations, the moral, civil and social habits of the people, which predated the formation of the nation-state, E. Burke, Selections (London, 1914) p. 263