The expressive function of constitutional amendment rules
| Autor | Richard Albert |
| Cargo | Associate Professor at Boston College Law School (Boston, USA), where he specializes in constitutional law and comparative constitutional law |
| Páginas | 7-64 |
Licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons
Licensed under Creative Commons
The expressive function of constitutional amendment rules*
A relevante função das regras de mudança constitucional
RICHARD ALBERT**
Boston College Law School (United States of America)
richard.albert@bc.edu
Recebido/Received: 24.11.2014 / November 24th, 2014
Aprovado/Approved: 10.12.2014 / December 10th, 2014
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais
ISSN 2359-5639
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5380/rinc.v2i1.43100
Resumo
A presente pesquisa enfoca a questão de como as mu-
danças constitucionais informais obscureceram a per-
manente relevância das regras de alteração formal da
Constituição. Nesse artigo, retoma-se a atenção para as
mudanças formais com o intuito de demostrar que as re-
gras de alteração formal – não as alterações formais, mas
as próprias regras de alteração – desempenham uma
função subestimada: expressar valores constitucionais.
Delineando o tema a partir de Cons-tituições nacionais,
em particular a canadense, a sul-africana, a alemã e a es-
tadunidente, ilustra-se como os constituintes podem im-
plantar regras de alteração formal da Constituição para
criar uma hierarquia constitucional formal que reita
Como citar esse artigo/How to cite this article: ALBERT, Richard. The expressive function of constitutional amendment rules.
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais, Curitiba, vol. 2, n. 1, p. 7-64, jan./abr. 2015. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5380/rinc.
v2i1.43100
* This project was supported by the Boston College Law School Fund. This article rst appeared in Volume 59:2 of the McGill Law
Journal, published in 2013. For helpful comments and conversations, I thank Carlos Bernal-Pulido, Brannon Denning, Rosalind Dix-
on, Oran Doyle, Tom Ginsburg, Claudia Haupt, Ran Hirschl, Rick Kay, Mark Kende, David Landau, Will Partlett, Vlad Perju, Arie Rosen,
Yaniv Roznai, Ozan Varol, Tom Kohler, and John Vile. I am grateful for the useful suggestions and criticisms I received from the three
anonymous external reviewers who recommended this submission for publication. I have also benetted from presenting earlier
versions of this article at Indiana University–McKinney School of Law, the University of San Francisco Law School, the 2013 Annual
Meeting of the Law & Society Association, and in the 2012–13 AADS works-in-progress lecture series at Boston College. I am also
grateful to the editors of the McGill Law Journal for their outstanding editorial contributions to this article.
** Associate Professor at Boston College Law School (Boston, USA), where he specializes in constitutional law and comparative
constitutional law. Juris Doctor – J.D. (Yale University); Bachelor of Civil Law – B.C.L. (Oxford University); Master of Laws – LL.M. (Har-
vard University). In 2010, he received the Hessel Yntema Prize, which is given annually to a scholar under the age of 40 to recognize
“the most outstanding article” on comparative law. Richard Albert is Book Reviews Editor for the peer-reviewed American Journal
of Comparative Law, an elected member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, an elected member of the Executive
Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law, a member of the Governing Council of the International Society of Public
Law, a Distinguished Academic Associate at the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardi Law School, a Senior Research Fellow at
the Council for Canadian Democracy, and a founding editor of I-CONnect, the new scholarly blog of the International Journal of
Constitutional Law (I-CON). E-mail: richard.albert@bc.edu
7
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais, Curitiba, vol. 2, n. 1, p. 7-64, jan./ab r. 2015.
Abstract
The current scholarly focus on informal constitutional
amendment has obscured the continuing relevance of
formal amendment rules. In this article, I return our atten-
tion to formal amendment in order to show that formal
amendment rules—not formal amendments but formal
amendment rules themselves—perform an underappre-
ciated function: to express constitutional values. Drawing
from national constitutions, in particular the Canadian,
South African, German, and United States constitutions, I
illustrate how constitutional designers may deploy formal
amendment rules to create a formal constitutional hierar-
chy that reects special political commitments. That formal
amendment rules may express constitutional values is both
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais, Curitiba, vol. 2, n. 1, p. 7-64, jan./ab r. 2015.
Richard Albert
8
CONTENTS
1. Introduction; 2. The Functions of Constitutional Amendment Rules; 2.1. Why Entrench Formal
Amendment Rules? 2.2. Values in the Constitutional Text; 3. Constitutional Values and Formal
Amendment Rules; 3.1. Creating a Constitutional Hierarchy; 3.2. Constitutional Values and Constitutional
Hierarchy; 3.3. Constitutional Hierarchy in Formal Amendment Rules; 4. The Authenticity of Formal
Entrenchment; 4.1. Purpose and Perception; 4.2. Designing Constitutional Values; 4.3. Interpreting
Constitutional Values; 5. Conclusion; 6. References.
1. INTRODUCTION
Formal constitutional amendment rules are largely corrective. Recognizing that
a decient constitution risks building error upon error until the only eective repair
becomes revolution,1 constitutional designers entrench formal amendment rules that
can be used to peacefully correct the constitution’s design.2 Fixing defects is therefore
an essential function of formal amendment rules. Political actors generally deploy for-
mal amendment rules to “amend” a constitution — from the Latin verb “emendare”— in
order to “free [it] from fault” or to “put [it] right.”3 Yet formal amendment rules do more
than entrench a procedure for perfecting apparent imperfections in the written consti-
tution: they may also serve the underappreciated function of expressing constitutional
values.
1 LOEWENSTEIN, Karl. Reections on the Value of Constitutions in Our Revolutionary Age. In: ZURCHER, Arnold J
(Org.). Constitutions and Constitutional Trends Since World War II. New York: New York University Press, 1951.
p. 191-215.
2 BURGESS, John W. Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law I: Sovereignty and Liberty. Boston:
Ginn & Co, 1893.p. 137.
3 GARNER, Bryan A. Modern American Usage, 3 ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 41.
determinados compromissos políticos. O fato de que re-
gras de alteração formal possam expressar valores cons-
titucionais é uma contribuição simultaneamente elucida-
tiva e complicadora para o seu estudo. Essa tese elucida o
estudo das regras de alteração formal ao demonstrar que
tais regras podem servir a um propósito que a doutrina
ainda não as atribuiu; porém ela complica o estudo ao in-
dicar que o texto constitucional por si só não é capaz de
provar se os valores constitucionais expressos em regras
de alteração formal representam compromissos políticos
autênticos ou inautênticos.
Palavras-chave: regras de mudança constitucional; re-
gras formais de alteração constitucional; valores consti-
tucionais; hierarquia constitucional; entrincheiramento
formal.
a clarifying and a complicating contribution to their study.
This thesis claries the study of formal amendment rules by
showing that such rules may serve a function that scholars
have yet to attribute to them; yet it complicates this study
by indicating that the constitutional text alone cannot pro-
ve whether the constitutional values expressed in formal
amendment rules represent authentic or inauthentic poli-
tical commitments.
Keywords: constitutional amendment rules; formal
amendment rules; constitutional values; constitutional hie-
rarchy; formal entrenchment.
The expressive function of constitutional amendment rules
9
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais, Curitiba, vol. 2, n. 1, p. 7-64, jan./ab r. 2015.
Much of the current scholarship on constitutional amendment explores infor-
mal amendment.4 This focus, while important, has obscured the continuing relevance
of formal amendment rules. Consider formal and informal amendment practices in the
United States. Today it is dicult,5 if not virtually inconceivable,6 to gather the superma-
jorities needed to formally amend the United States Constitution pursuant to Article
V.7 That there have been only twenty-seven textual additions to the Constitution since
1789—and of those, ten were packaged as the Bill of Rights—reveals just how rarely
political actors have resorted to the constitution’s formal amendment procedures.8
Spurred by the diculty of constitutional change through Article V,9 political actors
4 An informal amendment occurs “when political norms change, or courts (possibly responding to political pres-
sures) ‘interpret’ or construct the constitution so as to bring it in line with policy preferences” (GINSBURG,Tom; POS-
NER, Eric A. Subsconstitutionalism. Stanford Law Review, California, vol. 62, p.1583-1600, 2010.) There is vast body
of scholarship on informal amendment. See e.g. ACKERMAN, Bruce. We the People 1: Foundations. Cambridge:
Belknap Press, 199. p. 266; ACKERMAN. Bruce. We the People 2: Transformations. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1998.
p.383–420; WEBBER, Jeremy. Reimagining Canada: Language, Culture, Community, and the Canadian Constitution.
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. p. 260-305; STRAUSS, David A. The Living Constitution. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 120-39; JEFFERY, Charlie. Dimensions of Constitutional Change: Germany and the
United Kingdom Compared. In: GUNLICKS, Arthur B (Org.). German Public Policy and Federalism: Current Debates
on Political, Legal, and Social Issues. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003. p. 197-203; GRIFFIN, Stephen M. Constitu-
ent Power and Constitutional Change in American Constitutionalism. In: LOUGHLIN, Martin; WALKER, Neil (Org.).
The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form. New York: Oxford University Press,
2007. p. 49, 52-61; see also RAY, S.N. Modern Comparative Politics: Approaches, Methods and Issues, 3d. Delhi:
Prentice-Hall of India, 2004. p. 117-131. (discussing formal and informal amendment in comparative perspective);
DENNING, Brannon P. Means to Amend: Theories of Constitutional Change. Tennessee Law Review, Tennessee,
vol.65, n.155, 1997. p.180–209. (surveying theories of informal amendment); GERKEN, Heather K. The Hydraulics of
Constitutional Reform: A Skeptical Response to Our Undemocratic Constitution. Drake Law Review, Des Moines,
vol. 55, n. 925,2007. p.929-933. (cataloguing recent scholarship on informal constitutional amendment); see general-
ly LEVINSON, Sanford (Org.). Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. (compiling essays on constitutional change, both formal and informal)
[Levinson, Responding].
5 See FRIEDMAN, Barry; SMITH, Scott B. The Sedimentary Constitution. University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Philadephia, vol.147, p.1-45, 1998; KYVIG, David E. Arranging for Amendment: Unintended Outcomes of Constitu-
tional Design. In: KYVIG, David E. (Org.). Unintended Consequences of Constitutional Amendment. Athens: Uni-
veristy of Georgia Press, 2000. p.9, 10–11.
6 See LEVINSON, Sanford. Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the
People Can Correct It), 2 ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. p.21
7 US Const art V: “The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amend-
ments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a
Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of
this Constitution, when ratied by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three
fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratication may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no
Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner aect
the rst and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the rst Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be
deprived of its equal Surage in the Senate.”
8 See FISCH, William B. Constitutional Referendum in the United States of America, American Journal Comparative
Law (supplement), Ann Arbor, vol. 54, n.4, 2006. p.485, 490-491.
9 See e.g. SCHEUERMAN, William E. Constitutionalism in an Age of Speed. Constitutional Commentary,
Minneapolis, vol. 19, n. 2, p 353, 374–75; LUTZ, Donald S. Toward a Theory of Constitutional Amendment. American
Political Science Review, Denton, vol. 88, n.2, 1994. p. 355- 364.
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