The inexorableness of constitutional amendments and its democratic potentiality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5380/rinc.v7i3.73540Keywords:
constitutional amendments, constitutional dismemberments, democracy, constitutional moments, derivate constituent power.Abstract
Constitutional law and Democracy are two domains that are inevitably in tension. Nevertheless, there have been theories and proposals to improve the necessary coexistence of both elements in modern constitutional democratic systems. Richard Albert's work distinguishes between constitutional changes (amendments and dismemberments) and introduces a non-merely symbolic role to the people in terms of legitimacy, can be qualified as one of these theories. This paper focuses on the democratic input that Albert proposes along with his book.
References
ABAT NINET, Antoni. Constitutional Violence, Legitimacy, Democracy and Human Rights. Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
ACKERMAN, Bruce. We the people Foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
ACKERMAN, Bruce; MATSUDAIRA, Tokujin. Dishonest Abe. Foreign Policy, 24 June 2014. Available at: <http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/24/dishonest-abe/>.
ALBERT, Richard. Constitutional Amendments: Making, Changing and Breaking Constitutions. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2019.
ARATO, Andrew. The Adventures of the Constituent Power, beyond Revolutions? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
ARISTOTLE. The Politics and the Constitution of Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
CONCHE, Marcel. The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus On Nature. London: Creative Media Partners, 2018.
COTA, Maurizio. Partitocracy: Parties and their Critics in Italian Political Life. In: PASQUINO, Jones, E., (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
DIEMERT, Stephane. L’histoire constitutionnelle de l’outre-mer sous la Ve République. Nouveaux Cahiers du Conseil Constitutionnel, Paris, n. 35, Dossier: La Constitution et l´Outre-Mer, avr. 2012. Available at: <https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/nouveaux-cahiers-du-conseil-constitutionnel/l-histoire-constitutionnelle-de-l-outre-mer-sous-la-ve-republique>.
GALLOP, David. Parmenides of Elea: Fragments, a Text and Translation. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1984.
GREY, Thomas. C. Origins of the Unwritten Constitution: Fundamental Law in American Revolutionary Thought. Stanford Law Review, vol. 30, n. 5, p. 843-893, 1978.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015.
HERZOG, Donald J. Democratic Credentials. Ethics, vol. 104, n. 3, p. 467-479, 1994.
KALYVAS, Andreas. Constituent Power. In: BERSTEIN, Jay M.; OPHIR, Adi; STOLER, Ann Laura (eds.). Political Concepts, a Critical Lexicon. New York: Fordham University Press. Available at: <https://www.politicalconcepts.org/constituentpower/>.
KELSEN, Hans. The Pure Theory of Law. Clark: The Lawbook Exchange, 2015.
LOUGHLIN, Martin. The Idea of Public Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
NOOTENS, Geneviève. Constituent power and people-as-the-governed: About the ‘invisible’ people of political and legal theory. Global Constitutionalism, vol. 4, n. 2, p. 137-156, 2015.
RICOEUR, Paul. Événement et sens. Raisons practiques, vol. 2, p. 41-56, 1991.
ROZNAI, Yaniv. Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Limits of Amendment Powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
SCHEPELLE, Kim Lane. Aspirational and Aversive constitutionalism: The case for studying cross-constitutional influence through negative models. International Journal of Constitutional Law, vol. 1, n. 2, p. 296-324, 2003.
STRAUSS, David. A. The irrelevance of constitutional amendments. Harvard Law Review, vol. 114, p. 1457-1505, 2001.
TUSHNET, Mark. Peasants with Pitchforks, and Toilers with Twitter: Constitutional Revolutions and the Constituent Power. International Journal of Constitutional Law, vol. 13, n. 3, p. 639-654, 2015.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish in this Journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal of Constitutional Research the right of first publication with the article simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International which allows sharing the work with recognition of the authors and its initial publication in this Journal.
- Authors are able to take on additional contracts separately, for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the paper published in this Journal (eg.: publishing in institutional repository or as a book), with a recognition of its initial publication in this Journal.
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish their work online (eg.: in institutional repositories or on their personal website) at any point before or during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as increase the impact and the citation of the published work (see the Effect of Open Access).




















