Risk of Abusive Constitutionalism

Amending constitution is a culture; it is either democratic or plurality-conscious, or authoritarian or devoid of effective public participation. To qualify as democratic, amendments must be predicated upon a minimum level of consensus in society vis-à-vis a political or constitutional change. When that is not the case, we sometimes use a special phraseology called ‘abusive constitutionalism’ to refer to the change brought about. Abusive constitutionalism is a case where the body politic often shows that a particular amendment is needed and it has been done complying with all the procedures, but that is actually not the case. It is indeed a scenario of colourable exercise of parliament’s amendment power.

Read the interview here: https://www.thedailystar.net/law-our-rights/law-interview/the-risk-abusive-constitutionalism-1487266