Editing Constitutional amendment (section)

==Form of changes to the text==<!-- This section is linked from [[United States Constitution]] -->
There are a number of formal differences, from one jurisdiction to another, in the manner in which constitutional amendments are both originally drafted and written down once they become law. In some jurisdictions, such as Ireland, [[Estonia]], and Australia, constitutional amendments originate as [[bill (proposed law)|bills]] and become laws in the form of acts of parliament. This may be the case notwithstanding the fact that a special procedure is required to bring an amendment into force. Thus, for example, in Ireland and Australia although amendments are drafted in the form of [[Act of Parliament|Acts of Parliament]] they cannot become law until they have been approved in a referendum. By contrast, in the United States a proposed amendment originates as a special [[joint resolution]] of Congress that does not require the [[President of the United States|President]] to sign and that the President can not [[Veto#United States|veto]].

The manner in which constitutional amendments are finally recorded takes two main forms. In most jurisdictions, amendments to a constitution take the form of revisions to the previous text.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://amendments.rmc.edu/codicils-vs-edits/ |title=Codicils vs. Edits |publisher=Randolph-Macon College |date=5 December 2022 |website=The Virginia Amendments Project |access-date=13 May 2025}}</ref> Thus, once an amendment has become law, portions of the original text may be deleted or new articles may be inserted among existing ones. The second, less common method, is for amendments to be appended to the end of the main text in the form of special ''articles of amendment'', leaving the body of the original text intact. Although the wording of the original text is not altered, the [[doctrine of implied repeal]] applies. In other words, in the event of conflict, an article of amendment will usually take precedence over the provisions of the original text, or of an earlier amendment. Nonetheless, there may still be ambiguity whether an amendment is intended to supersede or to supplement an existing article in the text.

An article of amendment may, however, explicitly express itself as having the effect of repealing a specific existing article.<ref>See by way of example the [[Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twenty-first Amendment]] to the U.S. Constitution on the repeal of [[Prohibition]]. Section 1 of the article repeals the [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Eighteenth Amendment]].</ref> The use of appended articles of amendment is most famous as a feature of the [[United States Constitution]], but it is also the method of amendment in a number of other jurisdictions, such as [[Venezuela]].

Under the 1919 German [[Weimar Constitution]], the prevailing legal theory was that any law reaching the necessary supermajorities in both chambers of parliament was free to deviate from the terms of the constitution, without itself becoming part of the constitution. This very wide conception of "amendment" eased the rise of [[Adolf Hitler]] to power; it was consequently explicitly ruled out in the postwar 1949 constitution, which allows amendments only by explicitly changing the constitution's text.