The Politics of Constitutional Rigidity

Mariana Velasco-Rivera is an Assistant Professor in Law at Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, Ireland. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. She received her doctoral degree (Doctor of Juridical Science-JSD) and her master's degree (LLM) from Yale Law School. She also holds a law degree (Licenciatura en Derecho) from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Before joining Maynooth University, Dr Velasco-Rivera was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Comparative Constitutionalism held by Professor Ran Hirschl at the University of Göttingen, Germany and an Emile Noël Fellow at New York University, School of Law . Before her graduate studies, Mariana clerked for judge José Ramón Cossío Díaz at the Supreme Court of Mexico.

Using the Mexican case, this interdisciplinary volume tackles the question of what makes a constitution difficult to amend. It proposes a new framework for understanding the interaction of formal and informal factors in producing constitutional amendments within an 'economy of change.' The book illustrates the virtue of taking a broad interdisciplinary approach to constitutional studies, producing fresh insights with clarity and rigor. It will now become a standard reference in the understanding of constitutional amendment.

• 1: The Mexican Challenge 2: The Formalist and Anti-Formalist Approaches to Constitutional Rigidity 3: The Economy of Constitutional Change 4: Political Parties and Formal Constitutional Change in Contemporary Mexico 5: Constitutional Change and Constitutional Culture in Mexico 6: Actors, Choices, Decisions, and the Formation of Political Norms 7: The Supreme Court in Mexico's Economy of Constitutional Change 8: Conclusion