Legal entrenchment always depends on political entrenchment of the rules

Evidence

In fact, as Young suggests, formal barriers may be much less effective in preventing political and constitutional change than functional ones. More strongly: legal constraints may be meaningless in the absence of underlying political support. Recall the fear expressed by James Madison and other designers of the U.S. Constitution that constitutional rights and rules would create mere “parchment barriers.” THE FEDERALIST NO. 48, at 276 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1999). Madison recognized that legal prohibitions would only be meaningful if they could be made politically self-enforcing, by way of political decision-making processes and institutions that would selectively empower decision makers with the right interests and incentives. Generalizing the point, constitutional and other forms of legal entrenchment always depend on the political entrenchment of the relevant legal rules or their substance. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 187

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the reader’s question: functional durability of an embedded ideology depends on political self-enforcement, not just legal form. Connects to Madison’s parchment-barriers worry and to path-dependence/institutional-persistence literature. — connects to: Courts depend on political support to have influence — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 200; Political actors entrench power through functional mechanisms as readily as formal legal rules — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 42; Ordinary statutes can carry quasi-constitutional entrenchment power — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 463 (+11 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies the formal-vs-functional entrenchment distinction that structures how to test why some rationalizing ideologies stick.

Broader Connections

• Legal rules become binding only when supporters hold enforcement power #corroborates (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 471
• Political entrenchment operates through informal and coercive means, not only formal legal rules #expands (0.80) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 48
• Entrenchment can be functional, via empowered constituencies, not only formal legal rules #expands (0.80) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 370
• Legal structures both express and reinforce the distribution of power #corroborates (0.78) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3798
• Functional political entrenchment works without changing formal legal rules #qualifies (0.75) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 173
• Structural constitutional rules resist change despite eroding functional justification #complicates (0.75)