Constitutional law

The second entry is o limite material de revisão, and the English term for the same thing describes something else entirely. Portuguese names the boundary: a limit, in substance, on the power to revise the constitution. English names the fortification. A provision that no ordinary majority may rewrite is « an entrenched clause », and the work that puts it there is « entrenchment ». Behind the word stands « a trench », the ditch dug in front of a position so that whoever attacks it has to climb down and out again, and « to entrench » was first of all to place troops behind one. The picture is not decoration, it is the argument: an entrenched article is defended by a procedure deeper than the one that produced it. The same adjective does ordinary duty far from any constitution — « entrenched interests », « entrenched poverty », « an entrenched habit » — and everywhere it carries the same warning, that the thing will not be shifted by the usual means. A reader who renders o limite material de revisão word for word has the rule; « entrenched » has the reason it holds.