Theorising about Constitutional Amendment Rules: The Case of Latin America

This chapter proposes a typology of the rules of change found in Latin American constitutions. These rules of change will be analysed through three key constitutional theory distinctions, which will be introduced in Part I and serve as the chapter's theoretical framework: the distinction between the constituent and the amending power, between the constituted legislature and the constituent people, and between amendment and replacement. Part II highlights a number of features that characterise the rules of formal constitutional change present in current Latin American constitutions in order to develop the previously mentioned typology. Part III examines the typology in light of the theoretical framework presented in the first part of the chapter. The analysis will bring to the surface unstated assumptions present in – and shared by – some of these rules and suggest that different approaches to formal constitutional change might help (or not) protect constitutional orders from illiberal turns.