—Benjamín Alemparte, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Chile
Constitutions do not change only through formal amendment. Bruce Ackerman famously used the concept of constitutional politics to describe those rare moments in which extraordinary episodes of popular mobilization transform higher law outside ordinary constitutional procedures. I use the term differently. My concern is not with constitutional moments, but with the gradual emergence of governing practices that reshape the practical operation of constitutional democracy without altering the constitutional text. From this perspective, constitutional politics refers to the informal transformation of constitutional arrangements through changes in the way
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