Express Limits on Amendment

In one line

Four of the seven constitutions put something beyond the amending power in terms, and India's limit is judicial because its text puts nothing.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: an express limit on amendment is a provision of the constitution itself declaring that certain matters may not be amended, or may be amended only in a special way; it is distinguished from an implied limit, which a court derives from the structure or purpose of the constitution where the text is silent.

The express limits

United States, Article V. Two. No amendment made before 1808 was to affect the first and fourth clauses of Article I section 9, which is spent. And no State shall, without its consent, be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate, which is permanent.

Germany, article 79(3). Amendments to the Basic Law affecting the division of the Federation into Lander, their participation in principle in the legislative process, or the principles laid down in articles 1 and 20, shall be inadmissible.

Article 1 is human dignity, the binding force of the basic rights, and the acknowledgement of inviolable and inalienable human rights. Article 20 is the democratic and social federal state, the derivation of all state authority from the people, the separation of powers, the binding of the legislature by the constitutional order and of the executive and judiciary by law and justice, and the right of resistance in article 20(4).

Switzerland. Article 139(3), article 193(4) and article 194(2) all protect the mandatory provisions of international law, and articles 139(3) and 194 add unity of form and of subject matter, which are limits on the manner rather than on the substance.

Ireland, Article 46. No proposal for an amendment shall contain any other proposal, which is a unity requirement like the Swiss one. There is no substantive limit, and the Irish courts have held that a duly enacted amendment cannot be reviewed for consistency with the rest of the Constitution, because Article 6 makes the people the source of the Constitution's authority.

India, Canada, the United Kingdom. No express substantive limit. India's is judicial; Canada's Part V distinguishes procedures without forbidding anything; the United Kingdom entrenches nothing.

What article 79(3) actually protects

It is narrower than students assume and worth stating precisely.

It protects the division of the Federation into Lander, not any particular Land. Article 29 permits the reorganisation of federal territory, so Lander may be merged or redrawn; what may not be done is to abolish the federal structure.

It protects the participation of the Lander in principle in the legislative process, not any particular power of the Bundesrat.

It protects the principles of articles 1 and 20, not the articles word for word. So an amendment rewording article 20 while preserving its principles would be admissible.