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Democratic legitimacy does not require constitutional referendum. On ‘the constitution’ in theories of constituent power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2018

Ludvig Beckman
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Abstract

Constitutional referendum – Popular sovereignty – Constituent power – Democratic legitimacy – Participation in referendum as exercise of constituent power – The legal status conception of the constitution – The legal functions conception of the constitution – Open question whether every provision in codified constitutions is essential to constituent power – Therefore, constitutional referendum not always mandated by democratic legitimacy

Type
Articles
Information
European Constitutional Law Review , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 567 - 583
Copyright
© The Authors 2018 

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Footnotes

*

Department of Political Science, Stockholm University.

References

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2 The popularity of the constitutional referendum is well documented in Tierney, S., Constitutional Referendums: The Theory and Practice of Republican Deliberation (Oxford University Press 2012) p. 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Less than half of the constitutions of the countries in the world require referendum for amendment: Anckar, D., ‘Constitutional referendum in the countries of the world’, 7 Journal of Politics and Law (2014) p. 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23 Kalyvas, supra n. 5, p. 238.

24 Hutchinson and Colón-Riós, supra n. 5, p. 48.

25 Jaume, L., ‘Constituent Power in France: The revolution and its consequences’, in M. Loughlin and N. Walker (eds.), The Paradox of Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press 2007)Google Scholar and S. Holmes and C. Sunstein, ‘The Politics of Constitutional Revision in Eastern Europe’, in Levinson, supra n. 14.

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33 The comparative constitutional law literature is more focused on what defines a ‘reasonable’ rate of amendment. The idea is that constitutional amendment should be neither too easy nor too hard, given the value of political stability. The rules of amendment represent the exhaust pipe that ‘helps maintain the delicate balance between democracy and limited government’. Katz, E., ‘On Amending Constitutions: The Legality and Legitimacy of Constitutional Entrenchment’, 29 Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems (1996) p. 254 Google Scholar and Lutz, D., ‘Toward a Theory of Constitutional Amendment’, 88 American Political Science Review (1995) p. 243 Google Scholar. But see Ginsburg and Melton, supra n. 14 arguing that the amendment culture is more important than the rules of amendment.

34 Hutchinson and Colón-Riós, supra n. 5, p. 48.

35 Lutz, supra n. 33, p. 259. See also Contiades and Fotiadou, supra n. 1, p. 25.

36 Hutchinson and Colón-Riós, supra n. 5, p. 49.

37 Suber, P., The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change (Peter Lang Publishing 1990)Google Scholar s 18B.

38 On the other hand, popular sovereignty is consistent with the entrenchment of the rules of amendment, provided that the rules so entrenched provide for popular participation in the amendment of the constitution. That is, a rule that denies the people the right to participate in revising the rules of amendment is consistent with popular sovereignty if the rules of amendment mandate constitutional referendum in the process of constitutional change. Cf Albert, R., ‘Amending constitutional amendment rules’, 13 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2015) p. 663 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 This is true even though it is often the case that other laws can also be entrenched in the informal sense of being perceived as virtually unamendable parts of the legal and political system. For example, though the United Kingdom does not have a written constitution in the sense of a document subject to formal entrenchment, it does have law that is considered entrenched and that would accordingly represent ‘the constitution’. See Gardner, J., ‘Can there be a written constitution’, in L. Green and B. Leiter (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law: Volume 1 (Oxford University Press 2011)Google Scholar.

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42 Lutz, supra n. 33, p. 361.

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44 Loughlin, supra n. 15, p. 219.

45 Grimm, D., Constitutionalism. Past, Present, and Future (Oxford University Press 2016) p. 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Gardbaum, ‘The Place of Constitutional Law in the Legal System’, in Rosenfeld and Sajó, supra n. 4, p. 172.

46 A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (Liberty Fund 2010 [1915]) p. 140. See also M. Tushnet, ‘Constitution’, in Rosenfeld and Sajó, supra n. 4, p. 218.

47 Gardner, supra n. 39.

48 Alexe, supra n. 5, p. 318.

49 Hart, H.L.A., The Concept of Law (Clarendon, 1961)Google Scholar and also G.J. Postema, A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, Volume 11: Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World (Springer 2011) p. 279.

50 Onuf, N., ‘The Constitution of International Society’, 5 European Journal of International Law (1994) p. 13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Not all secondary rules are constitutive of the legal system, as not all of them apply to public officials. For example, the rules of contract are secondary rules in the sense that they confer power on private individuals to make and change legally binding rules, yet they are not constitutive of the legal system as they do not apply (exclusively) to public officials. I am grateful to Lisa Hill for asking me to clarify this point.

51 The electorate approved same-sex marriage but rejected the proposal to lower the age of candidacy from 35 to 21 for the office of president. For an account of the exceptional background of the referendum, including a constitutional convention performing a deliberative experiment see J.A. Elkink et al., ‘Understanding the 2015 marriage referendum in Ireland: context, campaign, and conservative Ireland’, 32 Irish Political Studies (2017).

52 Art. 46 Constitution of Ireland.

53 Hart, H.L.A., ‘Bentham on Legal Powers’, 81 Yale Law Journal (1972) p. 807 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halpin, A., ‘The Concept of Legal Power’, 16 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (1996) p. 129 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ch. 3 s. 4, Rättegångsbalken [Swedish Code of Judicial Procedure].

55 Gardner, supra n. 39. See also Davies, B., ‘Popular participation and legitimacy in constitutional change: Finding the sovereign’, 36 Liverpool Law Review (2015) p. 279 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Young, supra n. 29.