Constitutional Revision in France

Abstract

THE FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY formally opened the process for amending the constitution on November 30, 1950, when it adopted by 369 votes to 181 a resolution calling for the amendment of all or parts of eleven articles of the constitution. Four years later, to the day, the National Assembly completed the process by adopting by 412 votes to 141 a bill of amendments which became the Constitutional Laws of December 7, 1954, upon their promulgation in the Journal Officiel of December 8. That the amendment process should have taken so long is hardly surprising. The amendment procedure, prescribed by Articles 90 and 20 of the constitution, does not require extensive delays in deliberation, but it does require large majorities if a referendum is to be avoided; to build either a three-fifths majority in both houses of Parliament on a single text, or a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly requires long and patient negotiation. It was apparent from the moment when the original amending resolution was passed in 1950 that broad agreement on a set of amendments would be difficult to achieve. A large majority could be found in the National Assembly to support the resolution because it was necessary at that time only to list the articles or parts of articles of the constitution to be amended and not to state specifically how they should be amended. The Assembly's debates in 1950 indicated that the parties in the National Assembly had differing notions of what changes should be made; and the debates of January, 1951, in the Council of the Republic, which adopted the same resolution as the National Assembly, revealed that there would be considerable conflict between the two houses of Parliament as well.1 At its orizin in 1950, the movement for constitutional revision