Richard Albert - McGill Law Journal

McGill Law Journal — Revue de droit de McGill
THE EXPRESSIVE FUNCTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL
AMENDMENT RULES
Richard Albert*
The current scholarly focus on informal constitutional amendment has obscured the continuing relevance of formal amendment rules. In this
article, I return our attention to formal amendment in order to show that formal amendment
rules—not formal amendments but formal
amendment rules themselves—perform an underappreciated 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
hierarchy that reflects special political commitments. That formal amendment rules may express
constitutional values is both a clarifying and a
complicating contribution to their study. This thesis clarifies 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 prove whether the
constitutional values expressed in formal amendment rules represent authentic or inauthentic political commitments.
*
L’accent académique actuel sur l’amendement informel d’une constitution a obscurci la pertinence continue de la procédure formelle d’amendement. Dans cet article, je rapporte notre attention sur l’amendement formel pour montrer que la
procédure formelle (non pas la modification, mais
la procédure elle-même) remplit un rôle sousévalué : l’expression des valeurs constitutionnelles.
En m’appuyant sur des constitutions nationales, en
particulier celles du Canada, de l’Afrique du Sud,
de l’Allemagne et des États-Unis, je démontre que
les auteurs insèrent parfois des règles formelles
d’amendement pour créer une formelle hiérarchie
qui reflète des engagements particuliers de nature
politique. L’expression possible des valeurs constitutionnelles faite par des règles formelles d’amendement est une contribution qui clarifie et complique leur étude. Cette conclusion clarifie l’étude
des règles formelles d’amendement en montrant
que de telles règles peuvent servir à une fonction
que les érudits n’y ont pas encore attribué. Cependant, elle complique cette étude en indiquant que
le texte constitutionnel seul est incapable de prouver si les valeurs constitutionnelles exprimées dans
les règles formelles d’amendement représentent
des engagements de nature politique, qu’ils soient
authentiques ou inauthentiques.
Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School; Yale University (J.D., B.A.); Oxford
University (B.C.L.); Harvard University (LL.M.). Email: [email protected]. For
helpful comments and conversations, I thank Carlos Bernal-Pulido, Brannon Denning,
Rosalind Dixon, 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 benefitted 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. This project was supported by the Boston College Law School
Fund.
© Richard Albert 2013
Citation: (2013) 59:2 McGill LJ 225 — Référence : (2013) 59 : 2 RD McGill 225