Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: Between Contradiction and Necessity

Abstract

Abstract In Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments, Yaniv Roznai seeks to unscramble the apparent contradictions in the idea of an unconstitutional constitutional amendment. This argument is ambitious in its scope and its global comparative reach. Roznai does not limit himself to justifying explicit limitations placed on the power of amendment nor to limitations that go only to process. Rather, Roznai argues that amendment powers are always subject to limitations of substance and procedure and that these limitations may be implicit as well as explicit. In this short essay, I will argue that the form of argument deployed by Roznai cannot fully justify the doctrine of unamendability as Roznai elaborates upon it. It allows Roznai to establish that unamendability is a conceptual possibility but it does not follow, as he seeks to argue, that unamendability is a necessary consequence of constitutionalism.