The methods of informal amendment
No. 3 (2019-07-01)Author(s)
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Richard AlbertWilliam Stamps Farish Professor in Law The University of Texas at Austin (Estados Unidos de América) Secretary General, International Society of Public Law richard.albert@law.utexas.edu
Abstract
Scholars have shown that codified constitutions may be amended informally with similar effect as a formal amendment. Yet the many forms of informal amendment are not well organized for analysis and comparison. In this article, I examine the forms of informal amendment, I classify them as either conventional and unconventional forms of informal amendment, and I subsequently introduce an as-yet underappreciated and undertheorized form of informal amendment: constitutional desuetude. Constitutional desuetude occurs when a codified constitutional rule loses its binding quality upon political actors as a result of its conscious sustained disuse and public repudiation by preceding political actors. Constitutional desuetude both resembles and differs from other forms of informal amendment: it is similar because it changes constitutional meaning without altering the constitutional text yet it is different because it renders the constitutional text politically invalid though it remains codified and unchanged. I draw from the Constitution of Canada to illustrate the phenomenon of desuetude.
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