here is a question from Mongolia, where the parliament is considering drafting a statute on constitutional amendments. Some countries have specific statutes to cover the procedure for proposing and passing an amendment, filling in details not contained in the constitution. Do any readers have examples of such statutes? Please let us know by comment if so.
Statutes on constitutional amendment procedure?
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3 responses to “Statutes on constitutional amendment procedure?”
The constitution of the Republic of Ireland states, at Article 46:
“Every proposal for an amendment of this Constitution shall [after passing Parliament] be submitted by Referendum to the decision of the people in accordance with the law for the time being in force relating to the Referendum.”
I believe the key statute is currently the Referendum Act 1994, together with a few other pieces of legislation.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1994/en/act/pub/0012/index.html
Taiwan did have a statute in the past when the power to amend the Constitution was solely at the hand of a special national assembly elected on an ad hoc basis. The statute was called the procedural law for this special assembly and mainly regulated procedural matters such as how proposals for constitutional amendments should be brought up in the committee, should they be brought up in a package or on provisional basis, should they be voted anonymously or on record etc. As this special national assembly was abolished altogether in the 2005 constitutional amendment, this special statute has became ineffective.
Now, the power to propose constitutional amendments belongs to the parliament, the Legislative Yuan as we call it, and the procedure for such proposals follows general law-making processes. Once the amending proposal is passed by the parliament, it has to be voted by public referendum, and to be sure, the law on public referendum stipulates certain procedures on this voting process but mainly repeats what has been said in the Constitution and just go a bit further to more details.