The Difference between Constitutional Revisions and Amendments

From Fr. Joaquin Bernas:

An amendment envisages an alteration of one or a few specific and separable provisions. The guiding original intention of an amendment is to improve specific parts or to add new provisions deemed necessary to meet new conditions or to suppress specific portions that may have become obsolete or that are judged to be dangerous. In revision, however, the guiding original intention and plan contemplate a re-examination of the entire document-or of provisions of the document (which have overall implications for the entire document or for the fundamental philosophical underpinnings of the document)-to determine how and to what extent it should be altered. Thus, for instance, a switch from the presidential system to a parliamentary system would be a revision because of its overall impact on the entire constitutional structure. So would a switch from a bicameral system to a unicameral system because of its effect on other important provisions of the Constitution.

It is thus clear that what distinguishes revision from amendment is not the quantum of change in the document. Rather, it is the fundamental qualitative alteration that effects revision. Hence, I must reject the puerile argument that the use of the plural form of "amendments" means that a revision can be achieved by the introduction of a multiplicity of amendments!

But the further question really is: Why only amendments? The answer, which one can easily glean from the rather long deliberations on initiative and referendum in the 1986 Constitutional Commission, is practicality. In other words, who is to formulate the revision or how is it to be formulated?

If one has even only a cursory familiarity with the legislative process, he or she will easily realize how many times a provision is altered and re-altered before it reaches its final form. If this is true of simple changes, how much more complicated would it be if the revision of a Constitution were involved? Just as an example, it took the 1986 Constitutional Commission so much debate, through more than five months, to revise the 1973 Constitution. How can millions of voters agree on a formula to be presented first for signatures and finally for ratification in a plebiscite? Thus you naturally wonder (or, perhaps, you should not wonder) how the formula presented to the people two Saturdays ago was formulated, and who formulated it. Was it an initiative of the people? Perhaps, we are not allowed to ask that under pain of being considered destabilizers!

In the initiative and referendum process, the first step, after a formula has been polished, is the gathering of signatures to support it, and the second step is the presentation of the formula to the people in a plebiscite. Assuming that the required number of signatures was obtained two Saturdays ago, what proposal will be presented to the voters for intelligent assessment in a plebiscite? I recall that in 1971, when the Constitutional Convention wanted to rush the approval of the lowering of the voting age, the Supreme Court said that the proposed change could not be presented in a plebiscite yet in the absence of a completely formulated draft Constitution. Without a complete draft, the individual amendment would have no context. What would be the context for the proposal to repeal Articles VI and VII of the present Constitution?

I am afraid that what is going on involves not just unconstitutionality but also duplicity.