The Limits of Constitution (Re)-making in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Towards the ‘Perfect Nation’

Commonwealth Caribbean constitutions were famously likened by Francis Alexis to “birth certificates” – striking imagery that conveyed the paradigmatic shift occasioned at independence where written constitutions with entrenched Bills of Rights supposedly heralded the decline of parliamentary sovereignty. However, recent changes to Jamaica’s constitutional regime of fundamental rights, which entrench discrimination against historically marginalized communities by narrowly defining marriage and insulating capital punishment, are of doubtful political and moral legitimacy and call into question the scope of constitutional supremacy. This article explores these issues through an examination of the basic structure doctrine and its parallels in constitutional theory, which suggest that certain types of constitutional chage are beyond the authority of constituted powers. It argues that the idea that constitutions contain an inviolable core embodying a central identity would render these constitutional amendments unconstitutional, because of the extent to which they disrupt the coherence of the Jamaican constitution and its ideals of equality, fairness and social justice.