A Plea for Demystifying Constitutional Theory Categoriesстатья из журнала
Аннотация: There is a set of everlasting questions in constitutional theory, specifically regarding constitutional change, that have recently attracted increased attention within the field of comparative constitutional law. Who are “the People”? How does the popular will manifest? What are its limits, if any? Who should enforce those limits? What role should courts play? The democratic backsliding we have witnessed around the world in recent years (such as in Hungary, Poland, and Venezuela) demonstrates the utmost importance of these questions. Constitutional change, in any of its forms, has an inevitable impact on the creation, development, consolidation, success, and failure of constitutional democracies. Therefore, the study of constitutional amendment as a form of constitutional change must play a central role in any study of these issues. Recently, a variety of comparative constitutional law scholars have become interested in determining when it is legitimate to limit constitution-making and constitutional amendment powers to avoid abuses and halt democratic backsliding.1 Still, comparative constitutional amendment remains an understudied field mainly because studies of it have generally focused on the same few jurisdictions.2 Richard Albert, Xenophon Contiades, and Alkemene Fotiadou’s edited volume, The Foundations and Traditions of Constitutional Amendment, and Yaniv Roznai’s Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Limits of Amendment Powers,3 form the beginnings of a remedy to this notable gap in the literature. They not only expand the horizon of comparator jurisdictions, providing diverse and insightful contributions for the comparative study of constitutional amendment, but they also shed light on the challenges the field will have to overcome in the near future.
Год издания: 2019
Авторы: Mariana Velasco Rivera
Издательство: Oxford University Press
Источник: The American Journal of Comparative Law
Ключевые слова: Judicial and Constitutional Studies, European and International Law Studies, Legal Language and Interpretation
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 67
Выпуск: 2
Страницы: 483–490