Amendment
An amendment is a change made to a bill, law, constitutional provision or
regulation. The process of making such a change is also known as amendment.
The provisions of someconstitutionsmake constitutional amendment espe-
cially difficult, and these are known as entrenched constitutions. In some legal
systems certain laws are thought to be of peculiar importance and are similarly
protected—for example, laws guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of
religion or other basic liberties. Where a constitution has been altered or
supplemented, the amendments may become almost as important as the
original text. This is the case in the USA, where the first ten amendments
to the Constitution are collectively known as theBill of Rights. They were
ratified in 1791 and have since proved a major instrument for the protection of
individual freedom in the USA as well as providing models for other countries.
Of particular note because they have passed into the general political vocabu-
lary are the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech, religion and
thought, and the Fifth Amendment, which grants the individual protection
against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings. The most important aspect
of the Fifth Amendment is its guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life,
liberty or property without proper legal process (seedue process); further
guarantees are secured under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Since
1954 the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution has been used by the
Supreme Court to promote both procedural and substantive equality in the
USA in a way which has also served as a model for other jurisdictions (see
equal protection).
Where ordinary rather than constitutional laws are concerned, the general
assumption is that the stronger theexecutiveand the weaker thelegislature,
the less likely are amendments offered in the latter to be successful. Thus in the
FrenchFifth Republicit is rare for bills to be changed significantly during
their passage through the National Assembly. In Britain, when the government
has a working majority, amendments of substance are also rare, although the
combined pressure of government back-benchers and opposition parties can
sometimes lead to successful amendments.
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is pre-eminent among the manynon-governmental
organizations(NGOs) operating in the field of human rights. It was founded
in 1961 by a British lawyer, Peter Benenson (1921–), principally to work for
the release of ‘prisoners of conscience’ and political prisoners, the latter defined
by Amnesty to mean those imprisoned for daring to state politically unpopular
beliefs, provided they have neither practised nor advocated violence. Its
original technique was to encourage the mass writing of letters to such people,
Amendment