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The Language of Eternity: Judicial Review of the Amending Power in France (or the Absence Thereof)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2017

Denis Baranger
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Extract

In several rulings from 1962, 1992, and 2003, the French Constitutional Court (Conseil constitutionnel) has denied jurisdiction over constitutional amendments. This article shows that this solution can only be understood in the light of the doctrinal background that provides its intellectual justification. While refusing to judicially review constitutional amendments, the Constitutional Court is in fact deeply involved in the ongoing process of altering the Constitution. Also, while the quasi-official doctrinal analysis insists on the absence of material limits to the amendment of the Constitution, and on the absence of any “supra-constitutional” rules, an analysis of the language used by the Court in these rulings offers reasons to diverge from this view. While the Court has refused to review constitutional amendments, it has done so in a way that comes very close to the language used by those courts that stated that such amendments were justiciable. Far from adhering to a mere policy of neutrality and self-restraint, the Constitutional Court speaks a “language of eternity” with a rich substantive content.

Type
Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , 2011 , pp. 389 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2011

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References

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2 The English translation of the 1958 Constitution quoted throughout this article is taken from the website of the French Constitutional Court, http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/english/homepage.14.html.

3 Conseil constitutional [CC] [Constitutional Court] decision No. 62-20DC, Nov. 6, 1962, Rec. 27.

4 Genevois, Bruno, Les limites d'ordre juridique à l'intervention du pouvoir constituant, 14 Revue Française de Droit Administrate 909, 929 (1998)Google Scholar. To this day, this is the position held by the Conseil d'État in its judicial capacity. Cf. Conseil d'État [CE] [Council of State] Ass., decision No. 200286-200287, Oct. 30, 1998 (Sarran et Levacher).

5 CC decision No. 92-308DC, Apr. 9, 1992, Rec. 55.

6 CC decision No. 92-312DC, Sept. 2, 1992, Rec. 76. Unless stated otherwise, the English translations of the decisions quoted in this article are taken from the website of the French Constitutional Court, http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionneiyenglish/homepage.14.html.

7 Id. § 17.

8 Id. § 19.

9 Id. § 34.

10 Id. § 35.

11 CC decision No. 92-313DC, Sept. 23, 1992, Rec. 94.

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13 On organic laws (lois organiques), see infra pp. 415-16.

14 Author's translation.

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20 CC decision No. 99-410DC, Mar. 15, 1999, Rec. 51 (on an organic law concerning New Caledonia). The same formula appears in: CC decision No. 2000-429DC, May 30, 2000, Rec. 84 (on equal access of women and men to electoral mandates); CC decision No. 2003-478DC, July 30, 2003, Rec. 406 (on an organic law concerning experimentation by local authorities); CC decision No. 2004-490DC, Feb. 12, 2004, Rec. 41 (on the autonomy of French Polynesia); CC decision no. 2004-503DC, Aug. 12, 2004, Rec. 144 (on local liberties and responsibilities).

21 For example, the main proponent of the normative school, Louis Favoreu, was uneasy with the refusal of the Conseil constitutionnel to review constitutional amendments, while Georges Vedel supported it wholeheartedly.

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24 Id.

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33 Vedel, supra note 25, at 117.

34 Genevois, supra note 4, at 912-16.

35 Id. at 912.

36 The same requirement was already expressed in the Constitutions of 1875 and 1946.

37 If the phenomenon at play here is indeed supra-constitutionality. The reasons why this may not be the case are set out in the last section of this article.

38 Carré de Malberg, supra note 30, at 130-31.

39 Vedel, supra note 25, at 179.

40 Loi constitutionelle 2000-964 du 2 octobre 2000 relative à la durée du mandat du Président de la République [Law 2000-964 of October 2, 2000 on the Length of the Term of Office of the President of the Republic], J.O., Oct. 3, 2000, p. 15582.

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46 Id.

47 Id.

48 CC decision No. 71-44DC, July 16, 1971, Rec. 29.

49 Loi constitutionelle 2005-205 du ler mars 2005 relative à la Charte de l'environnement [Law 2005-205 of March 1, 2005 on the Charter for the Environment], J.O., Mar. 2, 2005, p. 3697.

50 See CC decision No. 71-44DC, July 16, 1971, Rec. 29.

51 See CC decision No. 73-51DC, Dec. 27, 1973, Rec. 25.

52 See CC decision No. 79-105DC, Jul. 25, 1979, Rec. 33.

53 Under both article 61(1) and article 54 of the Constitution, the Conseil constitutionnel must be seized by certain political authorities of the state: the president of the republic, the prime minister, the president of the National Assembly, the president of the Senate, sixty members of the National Assembly or sixty senators. It cannot seize itself.

54 U.S. 137 (1803).

55 See Carré de Malberg, supra note 30, at 114.

56 Le Pillouer, Arnoud, “De la révision à l'abrogation de la constitution”: les termes du débat, 3 Jus Politicum 1, 2 n. 2 (2009), http://www.juspoliticum.com/De-la-revision-a-l-abrogation-de.html Google Scholar.

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58 Id.

59 See Genevois, supra note 4, at 917-18.

60 There are other instances of the same phenomenon. See, e.g., 1958 Const, art. 53-1, inserted by Loi constitutionelle 93-1256 du 25 novembre 1993 relative aux accords intemationaux en matière de droit d'asile [Law 93-1256 of November 25, 1993 on International Agreements on Asylum] J.O., Nov. 26, 1993, p. 16296, which was designed to overrule the Conseil constitutionnel's interpretation of paragraph 4 of the Preamble to the 1946 Constitution in CC decision No. 93-325DC, Aug. 13, 1993, Rec. 224.

61 CC decision No. 82-146DC, Nov. 18, 1982, Rec. 66, § 7.

62 Loi constitutionelle 99-569 du 8 juillet 1999 relative à l'égalité entre les femmes et les hommes [Law 99-569 of July 8, 1999 on Equality Between Women and Men], J.O., July 9, 1999, p. 10175.

63 I wish to thank Arnaud le Pillouer for pointing out this argument to me.

64 Loi constitutionelle 2003-276 du 28 mars 2003 relative à l'organisation décentralisée de la République [Law 2003-276 of March 28, 2003 on the Decentralized Organization of the Republic], J.O., Mar. 29, 2003, p. 5568.

65 CC decision No. 2004-503DC, Aug. 12, 2004, Rec. 144, §§ 23-27.

66 Loi organique 2001-691 du l août 2001 relative aux lois de finances [Law 2001-691 of August 1, 2001 on Finance Laws] J.O., Aug. 2, 2001, p. 12490.

67 Ordonnance 58-1067 du 7 novembre 1958 portant loi organique sur le Conseil constitutionnel [Ordinance 58-1067 of November 7, 1958 constituting an Institutional Act on the Constitutional Court], J.O., Nov. 9, 1958, p. 10129.

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69 Id. at 152-58.

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71 At least it was ordinary in the sense that it was not a constitutional act that amended the constitution. However, it was not an act of parliament. It had been adopted by means of a referendum using the article 11 procedure. Interestingly, the act was referred to as an “institutional act” (loi portant dispositions statutaires), which highlighted its substantively (if not normatively) constitutional content. It is tempting to add such institutional statutes to the category of quasi-constitutional rules that includes organic laws.

72 Cf. Loi organique 99-209 du 19 mars 1999 relative a la Nouvelle-Caledonie [Law 99-209 of March 19, 1999 on New Caledonia], J.O., Mar. 21, 1999, p. 4197, art. 233.

73 See Roblot, supra note 68, at 146.

74 Loi constitutionnelle 2007-238 du 23 février 2007 portant modification du titre IX de la Constitution [Law 2007-238 of February 23, 2007 containing an Amendmen t to Title IX of the Constitution], J.O., Feb. 24, 2007, p. 3354.

75 A bill was eventually submitted in December 2010. See Assemblée Nationale, Projet de loi organique 2010-3071 du 22 décembre 2010 portant application de Particle 68 de la Constitution [Bill 2010-3071 of December 22, 2010 implementing article 68 of the Constitution].

76 Beaud, Olivier, La mise en oeuvre de la responsabilité politique du Président de la République française peut-elle être paralysée par l'absence de la loi organique prévue par l'article 68?, in La Responsabilité du Chef de l'État en Droit Comparé 149 (Société de legislation comparee ed., 2009)Google Scholar.

77 Beaud, Olivier, La souveraineté de l'État, le pouvoir constituant et le Traité de Maastricht—Remarques sur la méconnaissance de la limitation de la révision constitutionnelle, 6 Revue Française de Droit Administrate 1045 (2003)Google Scholar.

78 See, e.g., CC decision No. 2006-540DC, Jul. 27, 2006, Rec. 88. The idea of a constitutional identity is also found in EC law, but this is beyond the scope of the present article.

79 See Loi constitutionelle 2003-276 du 28 mars 2003 relative à l'organisation décentralisée de la République [Law 2003-276 of March 28, 2003 on the Decentralized Organization of the Republic], J.O., Mar. 29, 2003, p. 5568.

80 This approach to the legal nature of human rights has been criticized by contemporary authors such as Alexy, Robert, A Theory of Constitutional Rights (2002)Google Scholar.

81 Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Grundgesetz] [GG] [Basic Law], May 23, 1949, BGB1.1.

82 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen art. 16, available at http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/english/homepage.14.html.

83 Troper, Michel, L'interprétation de la Déclaration des droits; l'exemple de l'article 16, in Pour Une Théorie Juridique de l'État 263 (1994)Google Scholar.

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85 1 BVerfGE 14 (1951).

86 Baranger, Denis, The Apparition of Sovereignty, in Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept (Kalmo, Hent & Skinner, Quentin eds., 2010)Google Scholar.

87 See, e.g., CC decision No. 85-188DC, May 22, 1985, Rec. 15.

88 CC decision No. 2001-444DC, May 9, 2001, Rec. 59.

89 It remains to be seen whether this will be changed by the development of the preliminary reference procedure (to use Gerald Neuman's words) created by article 61-1 of the Constitution, which was enacted in 2008 and entered into force in March 2010. Yet it would come as a suprise if this new mechanism were able to bring to an end both the non-justiciability of constitutional amendments and the culture of “managing the constitution” discussed in this article. As yet, there is no sign that this might be the case. On the new procedure, see Neuman, Gerald L., Anti-Ashwander: Constitutional Litigation as a First Resort in France, 43 N.Y.U. J. Int'L L. & Pol. 15 (2010)Google Scholar.