Abstract

The work's starting point is the idea that the provision for a special procedure for constitutional revision constitutes a "confirmation" of the 'rigidity' of constitutional documents - the cause of which must be identified as the superiority of the constitution over all the acts that form the system - for which reason the provisions regarding the revision of a rigid written constitution cannot but be provided for by the constitution itself, with such procedure fulfilling the function of guaranteeing the rigidity thereof from a threefold standpoint. In the first place, the provision for a special revision procedure (stricter) sidesteps the political frailness of written constitutions. In the second place, the provision for such purpose of a legislative procedure, usually stricter with regard to the deliberative "quorum" and/or with the reiteration of deliberations, guarantees the relative stability of the pre-existent written rules of the constitution. In the third place, a provision for a special procedure, beginning from the post-World War II period, comes up against, in some constitutions, absolute material limits in the name of values assumed to be eternal or in any case politically irrepressible. Beginning from these premises, the work examines the textual profiles of constitutional amendments, of the exclusive competence of the Constitution to prescribe the rules pertaining to constitutional revision, of the inviolable nature of the normative provisions concerning constitutional revision and, finally, of the homogeneity of the content of laws concerning constitutional revision.