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The Constitution of An VIII is an excellent illustration of the fundamental connection between the French Revolution and the Consulate. The constitution was in fact drawn up using the model of an institutional mechanism whose principles of action resided in the specialisation of duties, whilst the Senate was given the task of guaranteeing the action demanded. The concept that the Constitution was a mechanism developed within the vast field defined by the science of social organisation. The authors of the Constitution of An VIII were convinced that civil law was not sufficient to ensure the reasoned control of political societies and as a result tried to establish close links between the constituted powers and the mechanisms revealed by the social sciences. Intentions such as these explain the singularity of this juridical thought, shared by some of the men of Brumaire, which made the rule of law the instrument of a project whose aim was direction without constraint.The enactment of these views, however, came up short against political reality, and the aims of the document were only poorly achieved, the text of the constitution as it was finally laid down being in the end a deformed version of Sieyès’ original intentions. On the other hand, the social sciences would continue to come to the aid of this mechanism compromised by Brumairian principles. Up until the fall from grace of those principles, this action gives evidence of the survival of an intellectual project umbilically linked to the Revolution.