Donald Bello Hutt, Review of Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law

Abstract

Constituent Power and the Law is a well-documented, thorough study of how the concept of constituent power has been employed by thinkers, lawyers, and politicians in the modern and contemporary history of constitutionalism. The book’s main aim is to challenge the widely held view that constituent power is an unbound, extralegal force, and instead to show that it has been theorized, and actually exercised in application of, channeled by, and/or limited by the law. Colón-Ríos’s is the first systematic analysis to bring to the surface the hitherto under-theorized and even neglected juridical nature of constituent power, and to show the limits that distinguish it from other concepts such as sovereignty, revolution, and constitutional change.