Can a law protect itself? For example, could it be written in to a law that, under no circumstances, it should be amended or abolished (a) for a fixed duration or (b) indefinitely?
I am most interested in the United Kingdom but would also be interested to know what the general answer is, if there is one.
Parliament is sovereign:
Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK, which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.
You might want to look at eternity clauses, which may not be used in the UK, but feature prominently especially in the German Grundgesetz.
An eternity clause in the constitution or basic law of a country is a clause intended to ensure that the law or constitution cannot be changed by amendment.
Of course, such an eternity clause only protects from alteration by lawmakers, but, as with all laws, it can only be upheld as long as people care enough about its enforcement.
More general answer.
There are provisions, usually encountered in basic laws, that those, under any circumstances, cannot be repelled. See, for example, this passage from the German Grundgesetz:
Amendments to this Basic Law affecting the division of the Federation into Länder, their participation on principle in the legislative process, or the principles laid down in Articles 1 and 20 shall be inadmissible
Similarily, famous legal philosopher, H. L. A. Hart, noted that there are 2 kinds of rules in law. We have primary rules, that tell us what we can and can't do and there are secondary rules. The secondary rules tell us how can primary rules be created. If law is enacted contrary to those secondary rules - it is not a law. For example, you wouldn't call a writing on a toilet door in American Congress a law - it was not passed officially, with voting, debate etc.
F. Lasalle has famously written that there are two constitutions. We have written one, with all rules neatly put down and something he called a real constitution, based on who is in power in a country. Let's say that a party X wins elections, forms government, gets all the power in the country, subordinates judiciary, but does not have the majority to change constitution. What is there to stop it from electing laws that are contrary to the basic law?
As for the limit of parlimentary sovereignty, consider this passage from Jackson vs Her Majesty's Attorney General case:
Parliamentary sovereignty is an empty principle if legislation is passed which is so absurd or so unacceptable that the people at large refuse to recognise it as law
Note, that I do not ascribe this passage to Yes, law can protect itself, nor No, it can't position. This citation points to one of the basic controversies in the philosophy of law: what is law and does every law need ''protection''. Consider, for example, that the parliament enacts a statute or a constitutional provision that every bald person's belongings shall be confiscated. Let's assume that the provisions were enacted according to all the procedures (secondary rules).
Would you consider the provisions just? Legal? Would you want the society to recognise this law? Would it need protection?
The Constitution of the United States provides for amendments to the Constitution by a process requiring ratifications by three-fourths of the states, but also says no amendment can deprive any state of its equal suffrage in the senate without its consent.
Ultimately, a law is nothing more or less than a kind of rule agreed by a set of people.
It might be agreed by some and enforced by others, there may be an informal agreement on how such rules may be set or changed, and who they apply to, or principles the collection of people follow to form the rules and distinguish between rules that are valid and not valid. But since the rules we call "laws" only exist because enough people (or enough of some part of "people") agree they exist, they can always be changed if people agree, because there really isn't anything stopping them being changed upon agreement, and they have no independent existence other than an expression of human views.
So the answer is no, laws can't "protect" themselves. That's for two reasons - people can change their minds, and by the nature of laws it isn't really possible anyway (as far as we know):
The idea that people can change their minds is explored in other answers, so Im going to focus on "possibility". To see that it isn't possible anyway, even if we wanted to, let's do a thought experiment.
Suppose everyone in the country has somehow become illiterate, so we don't have any written knowledge. (That doesn't change any laws, but it saves us from referring to books and old legal cases to derail the argument.) In this world, I develop a mind ray that let's me impose a deep and fixed belief in everyones mind, so they honestly believe it and think it is self evident and true, and always has been.
Now I use that ray and reprogram everyone's beliefs so they forget anything about the US constitution (or whatever law you see as fundamental in your country), and reprogram them to believe there is a law - and always has been - that completely contradicts whatever law you hold most dear. They completely lack any knowledge anything else ever existed.
And this would then be the law, there would be no basis to argue otherwise.
You could metaphysically argue they didn't freely choose it, or that some universal principle "outside people" sets what is a "law", but they themselves would tell you that you are wrong, and its how the law is in your country; police would patrol it, judges would enforce it, and so on.
You'd also have to say what principle it was that set the laws... and an appeal to universal principle probably won't work at all well, in light of how diverse existing laws already are (which tends to show there isn't some external decision maker to appeal.to).
Another scenario, without rays: much of America dies, except 20 surviving factory workers. (Or perhaps 200000). Which laws passed by the 'old' USA will they not be able to decide differently, even if all 20 (or 200,0000) of them agreed they wanted a different law? Answer: no conceivable law couldn't be made differently if they wanted it.
People have at times tried to set laws that lasted forever. Nobody, and no society or legislative body, ever, anywhere, has succeeded.
Any law, including constitutions, can be changed if enough people want it to change. As a simple, though unlikely, example, consider a law that literally everybody in a country wants to change from A to B. That law will be changed, regardless of what the constitution or any other law says; if it is felt to be necessary, those laws will be changed, too. As long as enough people want a law changed, including enough of the people who could stop the change, then a law can be changed.
Laws have no intrinsic power. They are merely a societal construct. They work because society in general agrees to be bound by them or, in less happy cases, because some part of society has enough power to force everybody else to be bound by them. Without one or both of those conditions, a law may as well not exist. And, indeed, there are many laws that fail this: see your favourite list of obsolete laws.
There's a logical fallacy in what you are suggesting; if the law passed on 19th Soptember 2017 can be annulled by a constitutional court or repealed by a future Parliament (to use the British terms), then the wording of that law does not affect that fact. Conversely, if for some reason it cannot be changed (or cannot be changed for a period), that reason must exist independently of the law itself, and need not be stated in the law.
So yes, a law can state that it cannot be repealed, but that wording will make no difference to anybody.
If you look at Turkey's constitution, it more or less looks like this;
1-) The republic of Turkey is blah blah
2-) The previous law cannot be changed.
Law is adopted through a procedure defined in a (written or, in case of the UK, unwritten) constitution. Adopted and also modifiable, later law takes precedence.
Can some constitutional rules protect themselves, then?
Logically, the only problem with amending a "protected" provision is that such an amendment might be unconstitutional. Practically, logic alone won't stop it.
A Constitution which would not establish a constitutional court with the power to annul unconstitutional acts, is a light which does not shine.
Can a constitutional court annul an unconstitutional amendment of the constitution itself, then?
Maybe.
I am struggling to see how to put this to test in the United Kingdom where the constitution is unwritten and is not composed of any clauses, much less eternity clauses. So in the UK the answer would probably have to be "No".
However, in my own country (Czech Republic) the equivalent was tested after a "one off" constitutional law (roughly corresponding to a constitutional amendment) was passed effecting immediate dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies, which was the sole purpose of that constitutional law. The Constitutional Court found a conflict with one of the eternity clauses in the constitution. In fact, two sources of conflict: Retro-activity in relation to elections of the sitting Chamber of Deputies, and also lack of general applicability (i.e., in any future similar situations whatsoever). The "one off" constitutional law was annulled and the Chamber of Deputies had to serve the remainder of the term.
This kind of protection apparently worked in this case. (Partly so because the parliament decided to play out the situation responsibly from this point on.)
There were other cases in the past where arguably "unmodifiable" constitutional provisions got amended (weakened), but nobody took the matter to the Constitutional Court to test.
This kind of protection is therefore nowhere near absolute, even if we discount the easy way of overturning a constitution en bloc: a revolution.
While the particular story contained in this answer is specific to the Czech Republic, some parallels can be found in Germany and Austria at least.
This may be better served as a comment, but I don't have the rep yet.
In a truly global sense, the answer is clearly "NO". Any government whose authority is behind the law can be over-turned and the law goes away.
If you limit the context, there are plenty of examples. The US Constitution includes the provision:
Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article;
Within the confines of the government running under the constitution, the constitution itself is a self-protecting law. Its mechanism for modification expressly prohibits one particular possible modification. Of course, had the government been overthrown before the time limit, such an overthrow would have made the entire constitution null.
KINDA
You can make it hard enough to renew it that nobody will ever be able to.
Something silly like the spanish constitution, 75% of congress, 75% of senate, +55% on a national referendum, again 75% congress, again 75% senate, and then the king's approval.
In New Zealand, at least, there is a concept of entrenchment. Where a law can be put in place with a provision that it cannot be changed or repealed unless voted on by a certain majority. A majority could be selected that has little chance of ever happening.
The Labour Government seriously considered doing this in their previous term. They had a clear majority so they could pass any law, unopposed. If they had done the entrenchment, it could never have been repealed, as it would be very unlikely for such a large majority to occur again. They also looked at double entrenchment, where I got lost.
The modern idea of law will never openly write preservatives into its code because it believes it is open to improvement.
Instead it's held back by becoming complicated and relying on overly technical language that prevents the average reader from really understanding what its trying to say.
No but YES
I said no because in India Constitution can be amended and said yes because if that amendment destroys basic structure of Constitution then there is a law or provision to stop that. Give you an instance where Constitution was being amended and the parliament tried to take full and total control by amending it.
This is clause 4 and 5 of 42nd amendment:
(4) No amendment of this Constitution (including the provisions of Part III) made or purporting to have been made under this article whether before or after the commencement of section 55 of the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 shall be called in question in any court on any ground.
(5) For the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that there shall be no limitation whatever on the constituent power of Parliament to amend by way of addition, variation or repeal the provisions of this Constitution under this article.
After this amendment Minerva Mills filed a case against The union of India. In which The supreme court of India said:
Since the Constitution had conferred a limited amending power on the Parliament, the Parliament cannot under the exercise of that limited power enlarge that very power into an absolute power. Indeed, a limited amending power is one of the basic features of our Constitution and therefore, the limitations on that power can not be destroyed. In other words, Parliament can not, under Article 368, expand its amending power so as to acquire for itself the right to repeal or abrogate the Constitution or to destroy its basic and essential features. The donee of a limited power cannot be the exercise of that power convert the limited power into an unlimited one.
