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50 Wake Forest L. Rev. 859 (2015)
Constraining Constitutional Change

handle is hein.journals/wflr50 and id is 901 raw text is: CONSTRAINING CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE David Landau* & Rosalind Dixon Constitutions are important instruments for promoting and entrenching commitments to democracy. But all too frequently constitutional processes are used to promote distinctly antidemocratic ends or to advance the cause of would-be autocrats by removing democratic checks and balances on the exercise of political power.' This kind of abusive constitutional action can also involve changes to the text of a written constitution, either by way of formal constitutional amendment or replacement, which are often difficult to reverse.2 By amendment, political actors can, for example, extend term limits or undermine institutions like courts. Wholesale constitutional replacement may be a bigger threat because actors can take a variety of coordinated actions against the political order. Recent examples include the constitutional replacement by the Fidesz party in Hungary in 2011,3 the Venezuelan constitutional replacement by Hugo Chavez in 1999,4 the attempted constitutional replacement by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2000,5 and the replacement of the Ecuadorian * David Landau, Mason Ladd Professor and Associate Dean for International Programs, Florida State University College of Law. ** Rosalind Dixon, Professor of Law, University of New South Wales. The authors would like to thank commentators at the Symposium on Constitution- Making and Constitutional Design held at the Clough Center for the Study of Democracy at Boston College Law School, the 2014 G+T Public Law Centre Public Law Roundtable held at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law, and the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association held in San Francisco, California. 1. David Landau, Abusive Constitutionalism, 47 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 189, 195-200 (2013). 2. Id. at 200-08. 3. See Mikl6s Bdnkuti et al., Hungary's Illiberal Turn: Disabling the Constitution, J. DEMOCRACY, July 2012, at 138, 142. 4. ALLAN R. BREWER-CARIAS, DISMANTLING DEMOCRACY IN VENEZUELA: THE CHAVEZ AUTHORITARIAN EXPERIMENT 35-36 (2010). 5. Lloyd Sachikonye, Constitutionalism, the Electoral System and Challenges for Governance and Stability in Zimbabwe, 4 AFR. J. ON CONFLICT RESOL., no. 2, 2004, at 171, 171-73; Masipula Sithole, Fighting Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe, J. DEMOCRACY, Jan. 2001, at 160, 160-63. 859

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