A report on Entrenched clause

Constitutions may also provide that their most basic principles can never be abolished, even by amendment.

Changes to constitutions, especially those with entrenched clauses, commonly require supermajority support in a legislature.

Articles 1 and 20 are protected by the so-called eternity clause ("Ewigkeitsklausel") Article 79 (3) that prohibits any sort of change or removal of the principles laid down in Articles 1 and 20.

The Corwin Amendment (proposed 1861) would, if ratified, shield "domestic institutions" of the states (which in 1861 included slavery) from the constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. This proposal was one of several measures considered by Congress in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to attract the seceding states back into the Union and to entice border slave states to stay. Five states ratified the amendment in the early 1860s, but none have since. To become part of the Constitution today, ratification by an additional 33 states would be required. The subject of this proposal was subsequently addressed by the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.

With reference to the provision of the article 39, paragraph 4 of the Constitution, which states that "for the enactment of a constitutional act, 3/5 of all deputies must agree, and 3/5 of senators present", changing the constitution is a more difficult procedure than changing an ordinary statute, making it an entrenched constitution in the typology of constitutions.

This special, entrenched process is triggered when an amendment to the Constitution specifically concerns the States by modifying the legislature or the powers reserved to the states in the Seventh Schedule.

In addition to defining the procedures for altering the Constitution, Article Five also shields three clauses in Article I from ordinary amendment by attaching stipulations.

However, Article 374 specifies that several articles are permanently entrenched; that is, they cannot be modified under any circumstances (Spanish: "en ningún caso").

It ends by shielding three Article I clauses from being amended.

She has written books on the conflict between democratic theory and entrenched laws, and on the tradeoff between supermajoritarian and majoritarian rulesets.