A Symposium on Richard Albert’s Constitutional Amendments

Abstract

“When is a constitutional amendment an amendment in name alone?”1 Richard Albert poses that question at the very start of Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking and Changing Constitutions in which he convincingly demonstrates that this long neglected topic is an essential aspect of constitutional law and constitutionalism. Albert meticulously unpacks the many facets of his opening inquiry throughout the book to reveal amendment procedure as a kind of koan for constitutional law. The topic is koan-like not in the sense of a concept beyond the ken of rational thinking, although Albert’s paradoxically phrased opening question certainly bears some similarities to the Buddhist practice. Instead,...