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Translating Popular Sovereignty as Unfettered Constitutional Amendability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2019

Eoin Daly
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Abstract

Popular sovereignty translated as unfettered constitutional-amendment power – Weakness of constituent power as justification for unfettered amendability – Alternative concept of sovereignty as unaccountability of constituted power – Popular sovereignty as unaccountability of the referendum verdict – Sovereignty emerging at end-point, not inception of constitutional-amendment process

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Articles
Information
European Constitutional Law Review , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 619 - 643
Copyright
© 2019 The Authors 

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Footnotes

*

Lecturer, School of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway; email: eoin.daly@nuigalway.ie. I acknowledge the efforts of the editor and anonymous peer reviewers in helping to improve the manuscript. This paper was first presented at the Irish Jurisprudence Society in April 2019, and I acknowledge valuable comments received from the participants.

References

1 For an overview see Roznai, Y., Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Limits of Amendment Powers (Oxford University Press 2017) Pt. I.Google Scholar

2 On the complex relationship between the people as ‘constituent’ power and the constituted organs of government, see generally Auer, A., ‘Editorial – The people have spoken: abide? A critical view of the EU’s dramatic referendum (in)experience’, 12 EuConst (2016) p. 397 at p. 402Google Scholar; Roznai, Y., ‘The Newest-Oldest Separation of Powers’, 14(2) EuConst (2018) p. 430.Google Scholar

3 See generally Roznai, supra n. 1, Chapter 2.

4 Roznai, supra n.1, Chapters 4-6.

5 These theorists, according to Cahill, ‘emphasised a close link between constituent power and limits on the power of amendment’. Thus ‘since the Constitution prescribes the procedure that must be used to amend the Constitution, including limits on the power of amendment, failure to respect the limits on constitutional amendment not only compromises the values enshrined by those limits, but also constitutes a failure to respect the constituent power which adopted those provisions’: Cahill, M., ‘Ever Closer Remoteness of the Peoples of Europe? Limits on the Power of Amendment and National Constituent Power’, 75 Cambridge Law Journal (2016) p. 245 at p. 248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Of course, there may be other, typically prudential reasons for rejecting a judicially enforceable limit on constitutional amendability. Most obviously, there will likely be intractable disagreement as to what ‘fundamental’ principles should be designated as immutable, and concerns over the empowerment of judges to interpret any such vague provisions.

7 See Tuck, R., The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2016) p. 249.Google Scholar

8 See further below.

9 See generally Roznai, supra n. 1.

10 Decision 62-20 of 6 November 1962.

11 Ibid., para. 2.

12 Decision 92– 312 of 2 September 1992.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Decision 2003-469, 26 March 2003.

16 As Albert, Nakashidze and Olcay put it, ‘the court equates the constitutional amendment power to constituent power, and interprets constitutional amendments as direct expressions of popular sovereignty’: Albert, R. et at., ‘The Formalist Resistance to Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments’, 70 Hastings Law Journal (2019) p. 639 at p. 664.Google Scholar

17 Art. 46, Constitution of 1937.

18 See e.g. Art. 411.1.

19 See further Kavanagh, A., ‘Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments from Irish Free State to Irish Republic’, in Carolan, E. (ed.), The Constitution of Ireland: Perspectives and Prospects (Bloomsbury Professional 2012).Google Scholar

20 In Byrne v Ireland, the Supreme Court asserted: ‘the State is the creation of the people and is to be governed in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution which was enacted by the people and which can be amended by the people only [as] the sovereign authority’, [1972] IR 241, 262, emphasis added.

21 [1983] IR 154.

22 [1983] IR 154, 163, emphasis added.

23 [1993] 1 IR 286.

24 See e.g. McGee v Attorney General [1972] IR 264.

25 [1999] 4 IR 321.

26 [1999] 4 IR 321 at 330.

27 Re Article 26 and the Regulation of Information (Services Outside the State for Termination of Pregnancies) Bill 1995 [1995] 1 IR 1.

28 By contrast, Barshack describes an alternative concept of ‘transcendent’ sovereignty which is temporally ‘open’ and extends to ‘ancestors and offspring – a concept which, he suggests, serves to ‘safeguard human life’ from the ‘sovereign power over life and death’: see Barshack, L., ‘Time and the Constitution’, 7 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2009) p. 553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 As Roznai phrases this argument, ‘even though the [primary constituent power] may be “lawless”, it may choose so to speak, to be exercised within the constitutional framework’: Roznai, Y., ‘Amendment Power, Constituent Power, and Popular Sovereignty: Linking Unamendability and Amendment Procedures’, in Albert, R. et al., The Foundations and Traditions of Constitutional Amendment (Oxford, Hart Publishing 2017) p. 36 Google Scholar. See also M. Tushnet, ‘Comment on Doyle’s Constraints on Constitutional Amendment Powers’, in Albert et al., ibid.

30 Cahill, supra n. 5, p. 251.

31 See T. Pereira, ‘Constituting the Amendment Power: A Framework for Comparative Amendment Law’ in Albert et al., supra n. 29.

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38 For a critical engagement with concepts of peoplehood in constitutional theory, see Oklopcic, Z., Beyond the People (Oxford University Press 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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40 Michelman, F., ‘Constitutional authorship by the people’, 74 Notre Dame Law Review (1999) p. 1604 at p. 1604Google Scholar. Similarly, as Chambers puts it, ‘The “people” as a corporate body that speaks in one voice is not an empirical reality’: Chambers, S., ‘Democracy, Popular Sovereignty and Constitutional Legitimacy’, 11 Constellations (2004) p. 153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Z. Oklopcic, ‘Constitutional Theory and Cognitive Estrangement: Beyond Revolutions, Amendments and Constitutional Moments’, in Albert et al., supra n. 29.

41 Putterman, E., ‘Rousseau on the people as legislative gatekeepers, not framers’, 99 American Political Science Review (2005) p. 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 For an argument against referendums as instruments of constitutional decision-making on this and other grounds, see Beckman, L., ‘Democratic legitimacy does not require constitutional referendum. On “the constitution” in theories of constituent power’, 14 European Constitutional Law Review (2018) p. 567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Oklopcic, supra n. 40, p. 126.

44 For an argument along these lines see, in particular, Oklopcic, Z., ‘Three areas of struggle: A contextual approach to the “constituent power” of the people’, 3 Global Constitutionalism (2014) p. 200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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46 Rubinelli, supra n. 35, p. 70.

47 Lenowitz, J.A., ‘“A trust that cannot be delegated”: The invention of ratification referenda’, 109 American Political Science Review (2015) p. 803 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also J. Lenowitz, ‘Why Ratification? Questioning the Unexamined Constitution-making Procedure’ (PhD Thesis, Columbia University 2013).

48 Lenowitz (2015), supra n. 47, p. 810.

49 Tierney, S., Constitutional Referendums: The Theory and Practice of Republican Deliberation (Oxford University Press 2012) p. 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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51 Sagar, supra n. 45, p. 12.

52 Ibid.

53 Tierney, supra n. 49, p. 128.

54 For discussion see Loughlin, M., ‘On the Concept of Constituent Power’, 13 European Journal of Political Theory (2014) p. 218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Tierney, supra n. 49, p. 13.

56 Clark, S., ‘A populist critique of direct democracy’, 112 Harvard Law Review (1998) p. 434 at p. 436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Tierney himself acknowledges that such exercises ‘come at the end of a process that was not necessarily from the beginning a self-consciously constitutive one’: Tierney, supra n. 49, p. 15.

58 Carolan, E., ‘Ireland’s Constitutional Convention: Behind the hype about citizen-led constitutional change’, 13 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2015) p. 733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Thus in Italy, for example ‘mandatory referendums have a functional similarity with multicameral decision-making’ and amount to a ‘negative legislative power’: Fabbrini, S., ‘Has Italy rejected the referendum path to change? The failed referenda of May 2000’, 6 Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2001) p. 38 at p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

See Kissane, B., ‘Is the Irish referendum majoritarian?’, in Marxer, W. (ed.), Direct Democracy and Minorities (Springer 2012) p. 153.Google Scholar

60 Daly, E., ‘A republican defence of the constitutional referendum’, 35 Legal Studies (2015) p. 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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62 Steinberger, P., ‘Hobbes, Rousseau and the Modern Conception of the State’, 70 The Journal of Politics (2008) p. 598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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64 Rubinelli, supra n. 35, p. 7.

65 See Arato, supra n. 36 and supra n. 39.

66 On this point see Poole, T., ‘Devotion to Legalism: On the Brexit Case’, 80 Modern Law Review (2017) p. 696 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loughlin, M. and Tierney, S., ‘The Shibboleth of Sovereignty’, 81 Modern Law Review (2018) p. 969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 The Supreme Court, in Miller, reaffirmed the orthodox view that the referendum result was purely advisory, partly because the sovereign parliament did not ascribe it binding status: R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] 1 All ER 158, para. [22].

68 As for the requirement that referendums be held, see Bogdanor, V., ‘Brexit, the Constitution and the alternatives’, 27 King’s Law Journal (2016) p. 314 at p. 314-315CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Relatedly, Phillipson argues: ‘it is time to consider whether a convention should now be recognised to the effect that parliament and government will abide by the results of referendums’: ibid, p. 322. Phillipson applies the ‘Jennings test’ to argue this constitutional convention is established. As Phillipson puts it: ‘nearly all MPs plainly regarded themselves as bound to implement the result of the referendum, even where they passionately disagreed with it. They thus appeared to recognise a powerful norm binding on them’. Tuck puts the case more strongly and suggests that while ‘technically they are merely consultative … the idea that [referendums] could be disregarded seems to most people about as fanciful as the idea that the Queen could actually use the power … to veto a Parliamentary statute’: R. Tuck, ‘Brexit: A prize in reach for the left’, 17 July 2017, ⟨policyexchange.org.uk/pxevents/brexit-a-prize-in-reach-for-the-left/⟩, last accessed 17 November 2019.

69 See e.g. European Union Act 2011.

70 As T.R.S. Allan puts it, ‘parliament is sovereign because the judges acknowledge its legal and political supremacy’: Allan, T.R.S., Law, Liberty and Justice: The Legal Foundations of British Constitutionalism (Clarendon Press 1993) p. 10.Google Scholar

71 O’Cinneide, C., ‘“The People are the Masters”: the Paradox of Constitutionalism and the Uncertain Status of Popular Sovereignty within the Irish Constitutional Order’, Irish Jurist (2012) p. 249 at p. 256.Google Scholar

72 For analysis of Dicey’s views on popular sovereignty, see Kirby, J., ‘A.V. Dicey and English constitutionalism’, 45(1) History of European Ideas (2018) p. 33, DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2018.1498012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 L. Green, ‘Should parliamentary sovereignty trump popular sovereignty?’, ⟨ljmgreen.com/2016/11/03/should-parliamentary-sovereignty-trump-popular-sovereignty/⟩, last accessed 17 November 2019.

74 Loughlin and Tierney, supra n. 66.

75 Lee, D., Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought (Oxford University Press 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Kalyvas, A., ‘Popular sovereignty, democracy and the constituent power’, 12 Constellations (2005) p. 223 at p. 226, emphasis added.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 O’Cinneide, supra n. 71, p. 256.

78 While this view was commonly espoused during and after the French revolution, Philip Pettit apparently adopts a similar perspective: see Pettit, P., On the People’s Terms: a Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2013).Google Scholar

79 Federalist no 10 (Clinton Rossiter, 1961) p. 81.

80 See Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789, Art. 3: ‘The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No section of the people, nor any individual, may arrogate to itself its exercise’. (‘Le principe de la souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la nation. Aucune section du peuple ni aucun individu ne peut s’en attribuer l’exercice’.) This rhetorical shift of emphasis stemmed from a concern to eschew populist tyranny or class-based factionalism: the ‘people’ might be understood as a discrete, embodied social class whereas the ‘nation’ represented a more transcendent, abstract corpus: Lemaire, F., Le principe d’indivisibilité de la République; mythe et réalité (Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2010) p. 56.Google Scholar

81 Lemaire, supra n. 80, p. 73.

82 Schmitt, C., Constitutional Theory, Seitz, J. (trans.) (Duke University Press 2008) Chs. 12-14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Lee, supra n. 75, p. 15.

84 Rubinelli, supra n. 35, p. 7.

85 Hoekstra, K., ‘Athenian Democracy and Popular Tyranny’, in Bourke, R. and Skinner, Q. (eds.), Popular Sovereignty in Historical Context (Cambridge University Press 2016).Google Scholar

86 Ibid., p. 17.

87 Ibid., p. 20-25.

88 Thus, ‘it may be objected … that if it is the people who seize sovereignty, then that is enough to change the character of sovereignty essentially. The tyrant is singular, and that is much of the problem, whereas the people is necessarily multiple and diverse, and so in taking over supreme power no longer holds it in a single locus. It is striking, however, how ready Athenian writers were to treat the demos as singular, willing as they were to attribute characteristics of an individual or personality to a polis, or to personify the people as a whole’: Hoekstra, supra n. 85, p. 24-25.

89 Eleftheriadis, P., ‘Law and Sovereignty’, 29 Law and Philosophy (2010) p. 535 at p. 557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

90 H. Arendt, On Revolution (Penguin 1963) p. 183.

91 Loughlin, M, ‘The concept of constituent power’, 13 European Journal of Political Theory (2014) p. 218 at p. 220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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93 Lee, supra n. 75.

94 On this point see Oklopcic, supra n. 40.

95 See Bogdanor, supra n. 68.

96 Walker, supra n. 63.

97 Ibid., p. 18.