prior probability would rephrase the above question this way: what is the probability that a court will declare an amendment to the constitution unconstitutional?

We often assume that all the provisions within a country’s constitution are internally consistent. But is internal self-consistency always the case? What about conflicts between international law, natural law norms, and a country’s domestic constitutional order? Does international law or natural law trump constitutional law?

Yaniv Roznai, a PhD candidate in the Law Department at the London School of Economics, has just published a fascinating paper (“The Theory and Practice of ‘Supra-Constitutional’ Limits on Constitutional Amendments”) on these questions.  I saw Yaniv present a previous draft of this paper at the Third Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium at Loyola University (Chicago) last fall, and was very impressed with his thoughtfulness and erudition. If you care about the philosophy of constitutional law, or what I like to call “meta-jurisprudence,” I recommend his deep analysis of the different levels of “legal orders” and their relation to constitutional law.