Constitutions’ Responsibility for the Future: Present Practices and Perspectives, with Particular Reference to the Romanian Constitution

One feature that is a strong argument in favour of written Constitutions is their stability. As long as they are the basis of the legal system and the foundation of a State’s government, Constitutions must enjoy stability. However, this feature should not be confused with rigidity. A constitution must prove resilience, adapt to the inherent transformations that society is going through, and identify the path that will prevent it, over time, from becoming anachronistic or incapable of fulfilling the role for which it was established. A constitution must be an open window to the wisdom or perhaps to tomorrow’s madness to ensure that it can benefit from that wisdom or temper that madness. How these requirements materialize in the regulations contained in the Romanian Constitution is the main question that we intend to answer to below. By conducting our analysis in a context of comparative law that concerns, above all, the constitutional space of the European Union, we will try to identify challenges, experiences, and, hence, regulatory perspectives aimed at strengthening the role of the Constitution in an increasingly dynamic society. Finally, a topic of reflection that we propose herein is the lifespan of a constitution, how and if we need to prolong it by achieving the right balance between the flexible regulation of the rules that it contains and the rigidity of the conditions for its revision.