Functional political entrenchment works without changing formal legal rules
Evidence
As the previous Part surveyed, concerns about entrenchment in public law have been focused on formal legal rules that create impediments to political change—rules of election law that increase the difficulty of replacing incumbents or prevailing political parties in office or rules about legislation that increase the difficulty of revising enacted policies. But political entrenchment can also be accomplished without any shift in the legal rules directly governing permissible processes of political change. As this Part describes, what electoral and legislative entrenchment accomplish formally and legally can also be accomplished functionally and politically. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 173
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Political entrenchment means making political change more difficult than it otherwise would be — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 47; Private contracts can functionally entrench policy by making future change extremely expensive — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 163; Blocking formal entrenchment hydraulically increases functional substitutes — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 431 (+21 more)
Broader Connections
- A ruling party exercises hegemonic power without formal juridical rule
#exemplifies(0.92) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 944 - Deliberate administrative chaos absorbs opposition and enables rule without visible change
#exemplifies(0.85) - Formal and functional entrenchment do not differ in harm or benefit
#qualifies(0.80) - Structural constitutional rules resist change despite eroding functional justification
#responds-to(0.72)