Sieyès was an exceedingly unlikable man.
Some saw him as a priest who had shed his robes; others took him for a hypocrite and cruelly attacked his greed. Yet Sieyès was unquestionably a man skilled in governing, a precious political legacy left behind by the French Revolution.
While others only knew how to tear things down, Sieyès understood how to build. During the Coup of 18 Brumaire, Sieyès had originally intended merely to use military force to compel a vote. Napoleon, however, directly dissolved Parliament and then promulgated the Constitution of Year VIII of the French Republic, establishing the First Consul, Second Consul, and Third Consul. In return, the First Consul relinquished the power to command troops, yet nothing stipulated that he could not "accompany the army." The cunning "lion of the wilderness" still held great power and had not, as Sieyès had hoped, been separated from the military. Thus, Sieyès had been sidelined.
America's judicial review system was the core of how its rule of law operated. Whoever held the power to interpret the Constitution in America was the core and leading force of that legal order. The U.S. Supreme Court held the final say, so the authority of the courts was the authority of the rule of law. Even whether there had been fraud in a presidential election was for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide.
Sieyès wanted to imitate America and create a judicial review court, one that was neither an ordinary court, an administrative court, nor a special court. Many legislators believed in his approach. Taking advantage of the Conservative Senate's January 7 announcement that it would begin replacing one-fifth of the Republic's senators whose ten-year terms had expired, Cambacérès removed twenty-six members of the Conservative Senate.
Yet the Legislative Body, the Council of Five Hundred,